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MENTAL DISCIPLINE AND 
EDUCATIONAL VALUES 



MENTAL DISCIPLINE AND 
EDUCATIONAL VALUES 



W. H. HECK, M.A. 

PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 



SECOND EDITION 



NEW YORK 
JOHN LANE COMPANY 
1911 



■ 

V" V 



Copyright, 1909 and 191 1, by 
W. H. HECK 






TO MY MOTHER 



PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION 

The early sale of the first edition enables us to 
add a number of quotations from recent discus- 
sions and from recent reports of experiments. 
We have also enlarged our previous representa- 
tion of earlier discussions and experiments, and 
have added a table of contents, a bibliography and 
index, and the dates of publication of all our refer- 
ences. The references and consequently the bibli- 
ography have been almost entirely confined to 
material bearing on the problem of mental disci- 
pline, so that the student will not be confused by 
references to extraneous material. Our own dis- 
cussion is left for the most part as it was in the 
first edition, except the chapter on "Localization 
of Function," which has been modified and re- 
duced. 



TABLE OE CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Problem 7 

II Review of Discussions 12 

III Review of Experiments 63 

IV Observations 118 

V Localization of Function 128 

VI General Concepts of Method 137 

VII A Standard of Educational Values .... 160 

VIII The Elementary Curriculum 182 

IX The Secondary Curriculum 190 

Bibliography and Index. 199 



MENTAL DISCIPLINE AND 
EDUCATIONAL VALUES 

CHAPTER I 

THE PROBLEM 

It is time that recent modifications of the hon- 
ored doctrine of formal discipline should have 
more effect on our practice. Though a great 
many teachers still believe in the old theory, 
whether or not they have carefully thought 
out their belief, the American students of educa- 
tional psychology have been approaching a new 
point of view. They are reaching an agreement 
upon the inadequacy of "the doctrine of the ap- 
plicability of mental power, however gained, to 
any department of human activity," or "the gym- 
nastic theory of education that it does not matter 
upon what the mind is exercised, provided only 
the exercise be vigorous and long-continued. " 
(De Garmo.) 1 Most of the recent American 

1 De Garmo, Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, 1901-2, 
"Formal Culture." 



8 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

and a few of the recent foreign books on educa- 
tion suggest some modification of the doctrine of 
formal discipline, but the discussion of the sub- 
ject is still in the polemical stage. 

General destructive criticism is not sufficient. 
We must come to realize in what specific ways 
the doctrine of formal discipline is false and in 
what specific ways it affects unfavorably present 
aims, curricula, and methods. But even then our 
position would still be negative and therefore, at 
best, only a means to some positive conclusion. 
We must also establish a standard for the disci- 
plinary value of studies and then apply that stand- 
ard to the different elements in the curriculum. 
If we do not, we have accomplished little. Why 
and in what ways should a pupil get mental dis- 
cipline from this or that study? To show why 
and in what way he does not get it is valuable 
only as a process of elimination in working 
toward a positive diagnosis. But even then, we 
have a third problem, the practical modification 
of courses and methods so as to gain from each 
and every part of each and every study its real, 
not to strive for its imagined, disciplinary value. 
These three large problems are discouraging 
when seen together in their significance. The 
practical changes involved are so far-reaching 



THE PROBLEM 9 

and the need for them so difficult to prove defi- 
nitely that both profession and laity are skeptical. 
In contrast to these difficulties, the doctrine of 
formal discipline has the momentum of tradition, 
it is emphasized by influential authorities, it has 
a powerful hold upon many teachers, it is easy 
to understand in its superficial meaning, it seems to 
explain many evident results of education, and 
it has long been the cause and the defence of 
dominant phases of curricula and methods. One 
should not be surprised, therefore, that the doc- 
trine continues to make itself felt throughout our 
school system and that the opposition to it is dis- 
organized, timid, and bookish. 

Can educators afford to allow this opposition to 
remain unproductive? If the doctrine of formal 
discipline were of little influence in present prac- 
tice, they might content themselves with theoretical 
objections, but the prominence of the doctrine 
necessitates definite, practical suggestions and at- 
tempts to modify it. If mental discipline is 
specific, not general, there is a pressing need to 
recognize the fact and to reorganize school 
courses and methods. Popular and professional 
misunderstanding will yield in time to a clear 
presentation of the value of a course based upon 
a theory of specific disciplines, of specialized 



io MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

habits, rather than a theory of general discipline, 
of generalized habits. 1 The time is ripe for 
working out and testing the actual disciplinary 
value of the subjects and parts of subjects in the 
school course. The experiments so far made are 
suggestive, though not conclusive, in regard to 
the changes needed, and they point the way for 
further theory and practice. 

Testing theory and practice in order to prove 
the comparative disciplinary value of the ele- 
ments in the curriculum is very difficult, due to 
the number and subtlety of the factors involved; 
yet no one can gainsay the truth that studies 
ought to prove their worth before they are ac- 
credited with an undisputed place in the curri- 
culum. If educators can work out no proof of the 
comparative disciplinary value of studies, they are 
doomed to wander in the dark, with no clear 
ideas to guide them in planning courses and 
methods intelligently. 

This book is but a tentative effort to modify 
the doctrine of formal discipline and, upon such 
a modification, to establish a standard of educa- 

1 As a good illustration of how the doctrine of specific disciplines has 
affected recent books on special methods, reference is made to Huey, 
Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading, 1908, pp. 363-5. The mental 
discipline emphasized by Huey, though far-reaching in its effects, is kept 
within the limits of reading, the special activity by which it is to be 
developed, or is applied to similar activities. 



THE PROBLEM n 

tional values. There has been no attempt to make 
a full discussion of the subject but merely an out- 
line for further study, a syllabus for individual 
or class use. The problems of mental discipline 
are too unsettled at present for any one to be 
dogmatic or to attempt more than brief sugges- 
tions. Our secondary purpose has been to sum 
up and organize the discussions and experiments 
in regard to the disciplinary value of studies, in 
hope that our readers will get a first-hand idea of 
how far students of education have advanced in 
their thought on this subject. It is also hoped 
that the numerous quotations will save them the 
time and trouble of searching through the widely 
scattered material from which our summary has 
been made. Most of these quotations are grouped 
together in four parts of the book, and we trust 
that their value and interest will atone for our 
giving them so much space. In class discussions 
of the doctrine of formal discipline, we have felt 
the need of such a symposium of opinions to put 
in the hands of students as a source-book for 
parallel reading. 



CHAPTER II 

REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 

The doctrine of formal discipline was implied 
in the educational practices of the Greeks and the 
Romans, gymnastics, music, and oratory being 
used to furnish a general physical and mental 
discipline applicable to all the needs of individual 
and civic life. The doctrine was at the basis of 
the ascetic discipline of the mediaeval monastics, 
who sought a complete development of the soul 
at the expense of bodily desires. It dominated 
the ideals and methods of scholastic education, 
with the drill upon the trivium and quadrivium 
culminating in the barren formalism and logical 
subtleties of University disputations, the ideal 
example in the Middle Ages of general reasoning 
power. But the doctrine was first clearly formu- 
lated as an educational theory in the seventeenth 
century, especially by Locke. Though it served 
as a defence of mathematics, its special purpose 
was to uphold the classical studies, when their in- 
trinsic value had been greatly reduced by the use 

12 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 13 

of the national vernaculars in literature, govern- 
ment, and education, and when the current empha- 
sis upon them had been criticized by the growing 
spirit of realism in educational thought. Monroe 
gives an interesting account of this movement and 
of its influence in the next two centuries, especially 
upon the English secondary school and the Ger- 
man gymnasium. 

"By the seventeenth century the linguistic and 
literary curriculum had become traditional, with 
the authority of the learning of two centuries be- 
hind it and with a scholastic procedure which in 
details of method and of curriculum, in the entire 
technique of the schoolroom, had never been 
equaled by any previous system of educational prac- 
tice Since this narrow humanistic 

education no longer had any direct connection with 
the practical demands of the times and no longer 
offered the sole approach to a knowledge of 
human achievement and thought, a new theory 
must be found to justify its perpetuation. This 
new theory was, in a word, that the important 
thing in education was not the thing learned, but 
the process of learning. In respect to this prin- 
ciple, the new education was but a revival of the 
formalism of mediaeval scholasticism." 

"The mind as a bundle of faculties was to be 



i 4 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

developed by exercising these various powers 
upon appropriate tasks whose value consisted in 
the difficulties they offered. These faculties were 
considered to have no necessary connection with 
one another, hence these disciplines were separate 
and distinct things; though some faculties were 
higher than others. The highest was the reason- 
ing power to be developed by appropriate disci- 
pline in mathematics, logical disputations, and the 
languages ; but the faculty upon which all the oth- 
ers depended, and upon the successful develop- 
ment of which depended the success of the 
education, was the memory. Discipline of the 
memory then took precedence above all other exer- 
cises. The best training for the memory was 
afforded by the mastery of material which had no 
inherent interest for the child." 1 

In a similar way Graves 2 discusses Locke's 
formulation of the doctrine of formal discipline 
and its subsequent influence upon education. 
"This doctrine of the formal discipline has had a 
tremendous effect upon each stage of education in 
practically every country and during every period 
almost up to the last decade, when a decided reac- 

1 M*onroe, Text-Book in the History of Education, 1905, pp. 505, 506, 
567, 568. 

9 Graves, History of Education, Vol. II., 1910, pp. 306-311. See 
also Vol. I., 1909, pp. 196, 213. 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 15 

tion began. The formal classicism of the English 
grammar and public schools and universities, and 
of the German Gymnasien, afford excellent exam- 
ples of the influence of formal discipline. While 
in the United States a newer and more flexible so- 
ciety has enabled changes to be more readily made, 
but a quarter of a century ago Greek, Latin and 
mathematics made up most of the course in high- 
schools, colleges, and universities, and until very 
recently the effete portion of arithmetic and the 
husks of formal grammar were defended in our 
elementary education upon the score of 'formal 
discipline.' But, with the growth of science, the 
abandonment of the 'faculty' psychology, and the 
development of educational theory, the curriculum 
has everywhere been broadened, and the content 
of studies rather than the process of acquisition 
has come to be emphasized." 

The first definite rejection of the doctrine of 
formal discipline was that by Herb art in the first 
quarter of the nineteenth century. This counter- 
influence is thus described by Henderson : — 

"According to Herbart we have, not the mind 
and its ideas, but rather just the ideas. The ideas 
do the thinking. The interplay of thoughts upon 
each other is the activity of consciousness. Hence, 
there are no faculties left. Herbart saves the ter- 



16 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

minology that refers to them, but with the caution 
that it is intended to indicate various phases of the 
interaction of ideas upon each other, and not in 
any sense separate powers of a mind to the ener- 
gies of which this interaction is supposed to be 
due. With the faculty theory departs the notion 
of formal discipline, which has no place in the 
pedagogy of Herbart, or in that of his disciples. 
For them the fundamental educational conception 
is not discipline but apperception. The important 
thing for a teacher to know is, not how well drilled 
a child is, how well his faculties may be expected 
to work, but what experience he has assimilated. 
This exploited, it can easily be seen what material 
the child will be interested in, understand, and as- 
similate. Mental power is a function of the or- 
ganized experience of the individual. Organiza- 
tion is inherent in the material itself, and not a 
result of its manipulation by a mind, or of the 
imposition upon it of a priori forms. Since form 
is dependent upon content, all studies are really 
content studies, and it is idle to talk of the dis- 
ciplinary value that their form possesses inde- 
pendently of their subject matter." * 

The direct influence of Herbart is shown by 

1 Henderson, Text-Book in the Principles of Education, igio, Chap. 
X, "The Question of Formal Discipline," pp. 291, 292. 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 17 

the following quotations from his followers. 
The German Herbartian, Rein, thus disposes 
of the doctrine of formal discipline: "The fiction 
of 'formal education' must be given up. In gen- 
eral, there is no such education at all; there exist 
simply as many kinds of formal education as 
there are essentially different spheres of intellec- 
tual employment." x The English Herbartian, 
Adams, has a delightful chapter on "Formal Ed- 
ucation," satirizing the emphasis upon form re- 
gardless of content by showing the superiority 
from this point of view of Fagin's school of crime 
in "Oliver Twist." "In short, the soul is not a 
mere knife that may be sharpened on any whet- 
stone, and when sharpened may be applied to any 
purpose — to cut cheese or to excise a cancer. The 
knife takes character from the whetstone." 
"Since we cannot have the knowing ego by itself, 
and since each new fact is acted upon by the facts 
which then form part of the apperceiving soul, 
it follows that the more facts that have been or- 
ganized into faculty, the more readily will the 
mind act, and the greater will be the range of facts 
upon which it will act easily. There are here two 
different qualities — readiness and range. The 
former is acquired by practice in apperceiving the 

1 Rein, Outlines of Pedagogics, 1892, p. 61. 



1 8 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

same or closely allied facts; the latter by apper- 
ceiving a large number of facts of different char- 
acter." 1 Here we have an over-emphasis upon 
apperception. This chapter is applied by Hay- 
ward to the problems of instruction in moral train- 
ing. "Power and skill and the other qualities de- 
sired by the advocates of formal training depend 
on apperception masses, and are limited by them." 
"Habits do not seem, to any important extent, to 
become generalized; the generalizing factors in 
conduct — though our author does not expressly 
say this — are not habits, but ideas." 2 

Space, should be given here to the following 
quotation from an early reply to the Herbartians 
by Hugh, who upholds the doctrine of formal dis- 
cipline, though recognizing "that the disciplinary 
value of studies should be sought, as far as possi- 
ble, in those that have a value on account of their 
content." 

"It seems, then, that formal education is to 
some extent a reality, according to the teachings 
of physiological psychology, both in the perma- 
nence of the acquisition derived from studies apart 
from their knowledge value, and also in the 
general application of this increased power for 

1 Adams, Herbarhan Psychology Applied to Education, 1897, pp. 
126, 131. 

2 Hayward, Education and the Heredity Spectre, 1908, p. 107. 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 19 

other forms of mental activity. Intellectual trainr 
ing stands on very much the same basis as physical 
training. A man's physical nature can be trained 
by doing useful work or the exercises of the 
gymnasium, which have no value whatever except 
their effect upon the physical system of the per- 
former. So one's brain system can be trained in 
studies that have a knowledge value for the in- 
dividual, but also in those that have none. In 
both cases, of course, it is best that the gymnastics 
should be secured in the performance of useful 
work, as in this case two ends are gained at the 
same time ; but as, perhaps, all kinds of work only 
partially develop one's physical powers, so 
that it is necessary to have recourse to gymnastics 
to complete the physical training, in the same way 
it may be necessary to have special exercise to 
develop particular brain functions, though such 
exercises have no knowledge value in themselves. 
In fact, it may be found that many physical ex- 
ercises, that usually are not classed as mental 
training, have no less value for the training of the 
mind than the study of the classics or the sciences, 
that manual labor, foot-ball, and other forms of 
athletics are just as potent factors in intellectual 
development as many subjects of the curriculum; 
as they not only train the muscular system, but 



20 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

also the brain cells by which the muscles are con- 
trolled." 1 

Although the doctrine of formal discipline was 
based on the "faculty" psychology and although its 
dominance was doomed when the latter was re- 
futed, it continued dominant long after its basis 
was destroyed, the close connection between the 
two was generally overlooked, and even now many 
people hold to the doctrine, who would resent an 
intimation that they were also holding to the 
"faculty" psychology. 

During the third quarter of the nineteenth cen- 
tury the doctrine of formal discipline was vigor- 
ously used and its validity was impaired in the con- 
flict between the classics and mathematics on one 
side and the natural and social sciences on the 
other. Spencer and Huxley were the great pro- 
tagonists for the sciences in this conflict. In 1867 
there was published in this country a collection of 
essays by prominent scientists on the "Claims of 
Scientific Education." These essays illustrate 
stages in the evolution of thought from the tra- 
ditional doctrine of formal discipline to the 
present doctrine of specific disciplines. The main 
argument for the disciplinary value of the sciences 

1 Hugh, Pedagogical Seminary, April, 1898, "Formal Education from 
the Standpoint of Physiological Psychology," p. 604. 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 21 

is based on both the superior formal discipline 
and the superior specific disciplines and knowl- 
edge to be derived from them. The authors vary- 
in their emphasis upon the former or upon the 
latter superiorities, but in general they emphasize 
a combination of both. This combination is well 
stated in the following extract from Youmans' 
introductory chapter on "Mental Discipline in 
Education" : 

"Let it be remembered that this culture does 
not deny the importance of mental discipline, but 
only the wasteful policy of vicarious discipline. 
The question has three aspects. The ancients 
employed the useless fact A for disciplinary pur- 
poses, and ignored the useful fact B. The adher- 
ents of the current theory propose to learn first 
the useless fact A to get the discipline necessary to 
acquire the useful fact B ; while a rational system 
ignores useless A and attacks B at once, making it 
serve both for knowledge and discipline. The 
ancient view was more reasonable than that which 
has grown out of it. It wanted one acquisition, 
and it made it; the prevailing method wants one, 
and makes two; and as it costs as much effort to 
learn a useless fact as a useful one, by this method 
half the power is wasted." * 

1 Youmans, Culture Demanded by Modern Life, 1867, "Mental Dis- 
cipline in Education," p. 23. 



22 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

A further advance is represented by the fol- 
lowing quotations from Bain, written in 1878: 

"Most definitions of training are obscured 
through the mode of describing mind by faculties. 
We have seen that to train 'Memory' is a very 
vague way of speaking. Equally vague is it to 
talk of training Reason, Conception, Imagina- 
tion, and so forth. Moral training is much more 
intelligible; there is here a habit of suppressing 
certain active tendencies of the mind, and foster- 
ing others ; and this is done by a special discipline 
— like training horses or making soldiers." "The 
element of Form, Method, Order, Organization, 
as contrasted with the subject-matter viewed with- 
out reference to form, has a value of its own; 
and any material that displays it to advantage, 
and enables it to be acquired, is justified by that 
circumstance alone. The targets used in learning 
to shoot, the wooden soldiers that are aimed at 
in the sabre drill, although unreal, are effectual." 
"It depends partly on the teacher and partly on 
the scholar whether the element of method shall 
stand forth and extend itself, or whether the sub- 
jects shall only yield their own quantum of matter 
or information." x 

The first definite discussion of the specific char- 

1 Bain, Education as a Science, 1878, pp. 139-141. 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 23 

acter of formal training, which we have been able 
to find, was a short paper read by Hoose before the 
National Educational Association in 1890. This 
paper has been entirely overlooked, but the fol- 
lowing extracts will show its importance: "Form 
in mental activity means that peculiar activity 
which the mind exerts when it does any particular 
thing, or thinks any particular thought or word." 
"Form is given to mental activity by the form of 
the subject-matter that is cognized, seized, known, 
thought, or done; this proposition is true in the 
most general sense. Each and every form of the 
thing to be done or thought requires its own (pe- 
culiar) form of mental activity to do it or to 
think it." "Exercise and repetition in the activ- 
ities of one faculty lead to mastery in those par- 
ticular forms only." "Mastery of one subject 
stands for itself alone in so far as the subject dif- 
fers from others in form." "When the forms of 
different subjects are similar, the habit acquired 
upon one of the subjects will be conserved in 
greater or less part to aid one in learning the 
other subjects." "The teacher gives form in the 
school-room to all the subjects that are not natural 
— i.e., to nearly all that the child studies. As 
the forms of the subject condition the forms of 
mental activity, the teacher (author) has great 



24 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

power and responsibility in the school-room." * 
Students are indebted to Ruediger 2 for calling 
their attention to a valuable discussion of the prob- 
lem of mental discipline by Brown (E. E.) in 
1893. Brown's discussion was called forth by the 
arguments of Ziller, the prominent Herbartian, 
against the claims of the formal disciplinists. 
''Starting from his general principle that the 
thought circle in which the power is first generated 
must be brought into close connection with that 
into which such power is to be carried and applied, 
Ziller proceeds to lay down three particular con- 
ditions on which the possibility of such carrying 
over of power necessarily depends. These condi- 
tions he describes as follows : 

"'l Thoughts, feelings, and other mental 
products which have been cultivated in one depart- 
ment are extended to another and assure to it their 
aid when both departments are brought into so close 
connection that the culture of the first is actually 
reproduced at those points and in those members 
where the connection is established; and not until 
then is such aid assured. To be sure, the culture 
must not only reach over from the first department 
into the second; the connection of the second de- 

1 Hoose, Report of the National Educational Association, 1890, "Men- 
tal Effects of Form in Subject-Matter," pp. 754, 755. 

2 Ruediger, Principles of Education, 1909, pp. 97-9. 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 25 

partment with the first must be accomplished quite 
independently. 

" '2. But a second condition must have preceded 
that already mentioned, if formal culture is to be 
certainly attained; the material in question must 
have been wrought out ideally. 

" '3. But even when this logical elaboration of 
material is secured in one department and likewise 
the connection of the first department with the sec- 
ond, in one direction as well as in the opposite, the 
formal effect is secured, thirdly, only on condition 
that the material on which it is to be realized is 
sufficiently well known in its full extent.' 

"Ziller sums up these three conditions in the fol- 
lowing statement: 'Formal power and efficiency 
nowhere arises from an isolated concept-mass; it 
never arises unless at least the concept-mass has 
been logically wrought out, and even then it does 
not arise unless the content of that sphere in which 
the logically wrought-out material is to be repro- 
duced and made good, is sufficiently well known.' 

"Ziller's enumeration of three ways in which the 
knowledge gained in one department becomes 
power for other departments, is highly suggestive 
and valuable. But is Ziller right in asserting so 
absolutely that there is nothing more? Does 
labor and attainment in any one sphere leave be- 



26 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

hind it no residuum of power available in other 
spheres? Is mental power wholly specific; never 
and in no aspect generic?" 

Then follows Brown's criticism of the Herbar- 
tian exclusive emphasis upon knowledge as the 
basis of mental life. Brown opposes this with an 
equal emphasis upon the significance of will : 

"If rudimentary knowledge and rudimentary 
will are both fundamental facts of mental action, 
and the one the necessary complement of the other, 
it would seem as if we might look for formal cul- 
ture along the line of will as well as along the line 
of knowledge. Will finds its bearing on the purely 
intellectual processes in the form of voluntary 
attention. Another result, then, of thorough in- 
struction in any one field of knowledge, which may 
be carried over into other fields and find fruitful 
application there, is increased power of voluntary 
attention. And this result answers to common ex- 
perience. For men unfamiliar with psychological 
terms will say that sound education increases one's 
power of concentration, which is the same thing 
expressed in a different way. Furthermore, the 
most of the general results supposed to flow from 
education appear on careful analysis to be at bot- 
tom simply this. The exercise of one kind of 
memory may in fact increase the ability to remem- 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 27 

ber anything, if it adds to the strength of voluntary 
attention. 

" Another element of formal culture may be 
added to Ziller's list; though in last analysis it 
may not be essentially different from that already 
presented. Sound education in any one depart- 
ment of knowledge leads to the formation of me- 
thodical habits, or perhaps better, the habit of 
method. The habit of close observation, associa- 
tion, induction, and deduction, acquired in the 
handling of one kind of thought-content, may be 
applied, not so perfectly perhaps, but effectually, to 
the treatment of any other thought-content, how- 
ever remote from the first. 

"There are results in feeling that are carried 
over readily from one sphere to others, no matter 
how remote. Note how a general tone of self 
confidence once established in the mind of an 
otherwise diffident child braces up every form of 
mental activity thereafter. There are moral qual- 
ities that, once secured, react on intellectual proc- 
esses, and acknowledge no such bonds as Ziller 
imposes. The ardent love of truth and the sense 
of intellectual responsibility that may be aroused 
through instruction — what mental activity do they 
fail to touch with vivifying power? 

"So we shall thank Ziller for having moderated 



28 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

some unreasonable claims and having at the same 
time pointed out some neglected principles, which 
it is important for us to observe in instruction. 
But we are not ready to accept in full the negative 
side of his argument. We shall still have faith in 
the far-reaching results of instruction to defy the 
attempt to confine them within narrow theoretical 
limits, and shall continue to believe that some of 
the best things in education are of this kind." 1 

The direct stimulus to the present-day contro- 
versy was given by the addresses of Hinsdale in 
1894 and 1895 before the National Educational 
Association. These addresses were widely read 
and have become, so to speak, a part of our edu- 
cational inheritance. The following extracts sum- 
marize Hinsdale's position: 

"The law appears to be this: in so far as the 
second exertion involves the same muscles and 
nerves as the first one, and, particularly, in so far 
as it calls for the same co-ordination of muscles 
and nerves, the power created by the first exertion 
will be available. In other words, the result is 
determined by the congruity or incongruity of the 
two efforts." "Through repetition, the energizing 

1 Brown (E. E.), Public School Journal, December, 1893, "How is 
Formal Culture Possible?" pp. 194-6. See also Brown's address, Con- 
gress of Arts and Sciences, St. Louis, 1904, Vol. VIII. , "Present 
Problems in the Theory of Education," pp. 76, 77. 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 29 

process becomes easier and more rapid. Re- 
peated activity in the same direction tends to 
groove the mind, or, to change the figure, the 
stream of activity digs out for itself a permanent 
channel of discharge. Mental power is of two 
kinds, specific and generic. In other words, the 
power that is generated in any activity can be 
fully used again in the same kind of activity, but 
only partly used in other kinds — the measure of 
the difference being the relative unlikeness of the 
two activities." I 

The present opinion of the subject is what more 
closely concerns us here. To illustrate this opin- 
ion we quote both from adherents and from op- 
ponents to the doctrine of formal discipline. 
Such a group of quotations seems the most direct 
and useful way to represent the many-sided dis- 
cussion of this problem. Out of the wealth of 
material illustrating the former position, we con- 
fine ourselves to five recent quotations, written 
amid the growing demand for a modification of 
the old doctrine. 2 

1 Hinsdale, Studies in Education, 1896 (Addresses 1894, 1895), pp. 
47, 73- 

2 Further references (two from American and two from British 
sources) on this side are White, Elements of Pedagogy, 1886, pp. 119, 
120; Roark, Economy in Education, 1905, p. 207; Dexter and Garlick, 
Psychology in the Schoolroom, 1905 Ed., pp. 211, 169; Collar and Crook, 
School Management and Methods of Instruction, 1900, pp. 129, 130. 



30 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

"The practical aim of a general education is 
such training as shall enable a man to devote his 
faculties intently to matters which of themselves 
do not interest him. The power which enables 
a man to do so is obviously the power of volun- 
tary, as distinguished from spontaneous, atten- 
tion In other words, whatever interests 

people commands their spontaneous attention, and 
accordingly such power of concentration as is nat- 
urally theirs. But if a man is to make anything 
whatever out of a matter which does not interest 
him, he must concentrate his powers on it by a 
strenuous act of attention controlled by the full 

power of his will The elder education, 

to be sure, cultivated voluntary attention, not be- 
cause it specifically insisted that pupils should un- 
intelligently devote tedious years to grammar and 
dictionaries of Latin and Greek, or to lifeless var- 
iants of the extinct vitality of Euclid; but, un- 
knowingly, it cultivated the faculty well. Through 
daily hours, throughout all their youthful years, 
it compelled boys, in spite of every human reluc- 
tance, to fix their attention on matters which, of 
themselves, could never have held attention for 
five minutes together. No doubt, plenty of sub- 
jects other than classics or mathematics could 
have been made to serve this purpose and could 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 31 

be made to serve it now. You can hardly imagine 
a subject, essentially uninteresting, which would 
not reward plodding work with a similar result- — 
with substantial ignorance of the matter studied, 
but with increasingly and lastingly muscular 
power of voluntary attention." 1 

This general value of specific training in volun- 
tary attention is also emphasized in the following 
discussion by Angell, though the author's point 
of view is somewhat different from that of Wen- 
dell. The article from which the extract is taken 
does not argue for the transfer of acquired abil- 
ity beyond the common elements in the processes 
Involved, but it does argue for the very general 
usableness and importance of many of the com- 
mon elements in specific training. 

"The persistent and voluntarily directed use 
of attention, especially when the subject attended 
to is lacking in interest, speedily becomes acutely 
distasteful. Voluntary attention involves some 
strain, and this strain, if long continued, is certain 
to become unpleasant. We first become bored, 
then restless, and finally find the thing intolerable 
and abandon it. Now no small part of the dis- 
cipline which comes from the effortful use of 

1 Wendell, The Privileged Classes, 1908, "Our National Superstition," 
171-174- 



32 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

attention in any direction or on any topic is to be 
found in the habituation which is afforded in 
neglecting or otherwise suppressing unpleasant or 
distracting sensations. We learn to 'stand it,' in 
short. This fact has been pointed out at times 
by writers on these topics, but it is rarely given 
the importance which it properly deserves. Any- 
one can attend to things which interest or please 
him as long as his physical strength holds out. 
But to attend in the face of difficulties which are 
not entertaining is distinctly an acquired taste, 
one to which children and primitive people al- 
ways strenuously object. From this point of view 
it may well be that such studies as the classics and 
certain forms of mathematics have a peculiar 
value in affording the maximum of unpleasantness 
diluted with a minimum of native interest, so that 
a student who learns to tolerate; prolonged at- 
tending to their intricacies may find almost any 
undertaking by contrast easy and grateful. The 
actual mental mechanism by which this intellec- 
tual and moral acclimatization is secured, is ex- 
tremely interesting, but we cannot pause to dis- 
cuss it. Certain it is that something of the sort 
occurs and that it is an acquirement which may 
presumably be carried over from one type of oc- 
cupation to another. If each form of effortful 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 33 

attention had a wholly unique type of discomfort 
attached to it, this inference might be challenged. 
But such does not seem to be the case." * 

As early as 1878 Bain had expressed the same 
idea : "There is a form of mental efficiency that 
attaches more or less to every productive effort — 
the giving attention to all the rules and conditions 

necessary for the result intended This 

is a discipline that we learn from everything that 
we have to do; it is not a prerogative of any one 
study or occupation, and it does not necessarily 
extend itself beyond the special subject." 2 

The doctrine of formal discipline has recently 
been restated more or less in its old form by 
Munsterberg, Cole, Sihler, and Shorey, and in a 
modified form by Judd. 

"The child tries and tries again to grasp 
and to fixate and to whistle, to read and to write, 
to jump and to throw a ball, and at a later age to 
perform complex activities such as typewriting and 
bicycling. The development is specific; the for- 
mal training of the will is general. The will 
which has learned to resist distractions can hold its 
own in any field. To be sure, to learn whistling 

iAngell (J. R.), Educational Review, June, 1908, "The Doctrine of 
Formal Discipline in the Light of the Principles of General Psychol- 
ogy," pp. 9, 10. 

2 Bain, Education as a Science, 1878, pp. 141, 142. 



34 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

with accuracy does not help to ride the bicycle or 
to run the typewriter. Yet this specific character 
of the training must not be exaggerated. It is, 
after all, not only the one specific kind of move- 
ment which is trained but the whole group of 
movements which involve similar activities. In 
training for baseball, we do not train for football 
and still less for piano playing. But by training 
for baseball, we secure general alertness in our 
motor responses." 

"Training of mental activity must be acknowl- 
edged as a function of the school certainly equiva- 
lent to the mere acquisition of knowledge and the 
development of inspiration. Moreover, our psy- 
chological study showed clearly to us that every 
mental function can really be developed. Apper- 
ception and observation, memory and imagination, 
attention and interest, imitation and reasoning, 
feeling and emotion, effort and will, in fact, every 
function can be rapidly strengthened through sys- 
tematic training and can degenerate through neg- 
lect. One side of mental life must not be crippled 
in the interest of others, as long as general educa- 
tion is in question." 

"A study which is throughout emotionally wel- 
come and naturally interesting may indeed be 
serviceable for the quick acquisition of a large 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 35 

amount of material but it neglects the develop- 
ment of that mental function which is most essen- 
tial for a life of high aim, the voluntary attention. 
There is no doubt that through the tendency of 
our time to yield to this demand for interesting in- 
struction, we already feel the dangerous results of 
the crippling of the voluntary attention. The su- 
perficiality which makes so much of the work of 
our day inefficient has its origin here." 1 

"In our examination of the power of choice 
between good and evil, we saw that failure to 
choose wisely is always due to a failure to see 
straight, to feel truly, to think logically. The aim 
of education, then, since it can only begin where 
heredity stops, must be to cultivate these three 
powers. If education is to help the coming gen- 
erations not only to get out of the past the best 
that the past can offer, but also to use this in living 
their own lives, it should be concerned not only 
with the handing down of mere facts acquired 
from the past, but also with the cultivation of 

power to use facts It is true, indeed, that 

the brain needs a large equipment of ready facts 
to keep it from unconscious error; but these facts 
are only to support the application of power : they 
are absolutely valueless without the power to make 

1 Miinsterberg, Psychology and the Teacher, 1909, pp. 192, 264, 265. 



36 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

use of them. They are subordinate to the rea- 
soning faculty. A large part of the teaching of 
facts in recent years has assumed that facts are 
valuable for their own sake, and has been con- 
ducted in such fashion as to prevent the develop- 
ment of the power of reasoning. The facts have 
been made unduly easy to learn, and the power to 
see, to ponder, to reason, has been stagnating from 
disuse. Our young people have been left without 
the power to apply their learning to their own 
problems, to see things in wholeness and in due re- 
lation one to another, and to distinguish a reason- 
able proposition from an absurd one. To remedy 
this must be the first educational reform, and for- 
tunately it seems already to be coming. " x 

"Another fatuous and evil thing was the arti- 
ficial creation of educational, academic, cultural 
equivalents, counting, mainly, by equivalents of 
time. Now I do not claim all virtue for difficulty 
and labor per se, though the simple truth must 
never be left out of sight that sustained exertion 
creates strength, and that there is the phenomenon 
of 'soldiering' in college life as well as among 
artisans." "If, in the domain of physical train- 
ing, a handful of youth only were to be seen exer- 

1 Cole, American Hope, 1910, Chap. I., "The Training of Powers," 
pp. 99, 100. 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 37 

cising at the parallel bars, while veritable mobs 
were playing mumble-the-peg on the green, we 
would have a fair analogon to illustrate the ear- 
nestness and strenuosity begotten by this glorious 
elective system." 

"Excellence (not easily attainable mediocrity or 
mere passing) has become rarer among our youth, 
as the numbers in the colleges increase. To sum 
up, in conclusion, we must return to the clear and 
definite precincts of liberal education; and the 
deeper meaning of the same would seem to be 
this: not in training for a trader or a broker, not 
in the great and useful lines of technology, not in 
asstheticism or in the contemplation of the beauti- 
ful; it is concerned, intrinsically, with no ulterior 
form of power and profit, but with the training 
and forming of the higher, nay, of the essentially 
human, powers, viz., to think, to reflect, to reason, 
to argue, to weigh, to recall, to review, to com- 
pare, to marshal in order, to arrange and coordi- 
nate, to utter and prove, to appeal and to lead." * 

"The education of those who can afford time 
for non-vocational study is not in the narrower or 
more immediate sense of the words a 'preparation 
for life/ but, from the point of view of the indi- 

1 Sihler, New York Evening Post, October i, 1910, "The Elective 
System." 



38 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

vidual, a development of the faculties; from the 
point of view of society, the transmission of a cul- 
tural, social, moral tradition. It must be a broad 
discipline of the intellectual powers that shall at 
the same time attune the aesthetic and the moral 
feelings to a certain key. No study but that of 
language and literature can do this, and it is best 
done through an older and more synthetic form 
of language and literature, that is, in relation to 
the student and his environment, classic. This is 
the meaning of the late W. T. Harris's somewhat 
cryptic Hegelism that self-alienation is necessary 
to self-knowledge. Or to put it more concretely, 
the critical interpretation or translation of such a 
language supplies the simplest and most effective 
all-round discipline of the greatest number of the 
mental faculties." 

"To-day there is no science of psychology, so- 
ciology, or pedagogy that can pronounce with any 
authority on either the aims or the methods of 
education. The confident affirmations of our col- 
leagues in these departments are not, then, to be 
received as the pronouncements of experts, but as 
the opinions of observers who like ourselves may 

be partisans There is no proof by 

scientific experiment and ratiocination that mental 
discipline is a myth, and no prospect of it. There 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 39 

are in general no laboratory experiments that 
teach us anything about the higher mental proc- 
esses which we cannot observe and infer by better 
and more natural methods. Still less are there 
any that can even approximate to the solution of 
the complicated problem of the total value and 
effect of a course of study. There is no authentic 
deliverance of science here to oppose to the vast 
presumption of common-sense and the belief of 
the majority of educated and practical men." * 

"We have been in the habit of saying that 
this or that kind of knowledge is valuable, and 
we have not really meant this or that kind of 
knowledge, but this or that subject-matter. I be- 
lieve it is time for us to take an entirely different 
view of what is meant by the term kinds of knowl- 
edge. The ability to reason independently, the 
ability to retain the essentials and neglect the non- 
essentials, the ability to carry on certain types of 
inquiry in any subject-matter, all these forms of 
ability are more important than the ability to re- 
produce a body of particular information. The 
meaning of this last contention may be made some- 
what clearer by saying that what we need in our 
examination of the high-school course of study is a 

1 Shorey, School Review, November, 1910, "A Symposium on the 
Value of Humanistic, Particularly Classical, Studies: The Classics and 
the New Education: III. The Case for the Classics," pp. 598, 607, 608. 



4 o MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

complete restatement of the value of these courses 
in terms of the mental habits which are cultivated 
as distinguished from the information which is 
gained. We are just at the beginning of a period 
of study of the effects of education. We should 
begin this study by getting some comprehensive 
notion of the different faculties or different types 
of mental life which can be regarded as advanta- 
geous. Instead of making the general sweeping 
statements about the value of certain subjects of 
instruction we ought to ask how the power to rea- 
son can be cultivated, how observation can be 
improved and widened in scope. In short, we 
ought to have some classification of our achieve- 
ments in the educational world which would make 
it possible for us to talk intelligently about the 
traits of mental character which have been cul- 
tivated. The moment I put the matter in that 
way I am sure you will all recognize my position 
on the much-discussed problem of formal discipline 
to which I am referring It is very inter- 
esting to note that the assertions which have been 
made regarding the non-existence of formal disci- 
pline have been based very largely on studies of 
simple elementary-school subjects. The examin- 
ation of neatness in arithmetic work has been one 
of the matters of discussion. The question 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 41 

whether arithmetic and geography are related or 
unrelated has been another one of the subjects of 
discussion. If anything is clear with regard to 
the problem it is that the final answer to this ques- 
tion will relate not so much to the work of the 
elementary school as to the work of the high- 
school. There is no doubt at all that the child in 
the elementary school is very dependent upon the 
new information which he acquires in any given 
subject. Furthermore his interests are relatively 
unsettled and his powers of concentration weak. 
The result is that the conflicts which exist between 
the various subjects of instruction in the elemen- 
tary school are so great that the information which 
can be gathered with reference to that period of 
education is of relatively small importance in solv- 
ing for us the broader general problem of educa- 
tion which presents itself to the high-school 
teacher. Formal discipline is and always will be 
a matter of very much greater concern to the high- 
school teacher than to the teacher in the elementary 
schools. If this statement is true it follows im- 
mediately that we must solve this problem through 
an examination of high-school subjects and their 

interrelation The problem can never be 

solved except by a re-examination of the subjects 
of the high-school with reference to the general 



42 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

faculties which they are supposed to train, rather 
than with reference to the subject-matter itself." 1 

Our second group of quotations is from authors 
who emphasize the specific character of mental 
discipline, although granting the wide usableness 
of the effects of training through the identical ele- 
ments, in many functions, of subject-matter, meth- 
od, etc. 

"The mind is by no means a collection of a few 
general faculties, observation, attention, memory, 
reasoning and the like, but is the sum total of 
countless particular capacities, each of which is to 
some extent independent of the others, — each of 
which must to some extent be educated by itself. 
The task of teaching is not to develop a reason- 
ing faculty, but many special powers of thought 
about different kinds of facts. It is not to alter 
our general power of attention, but to build up 
many particular powers of attending to different 
kinds of facts 

"Training the mind means the development of 
thousands of particular independent capacities, the 
formation of countless particular habits, for the 
working of any mental capacity depends upon 
the concrete data with which it works. Improve- 

1 Judd, School Review, February, 1910, "On Scientific Study of 
High-School Problems," pp. 93-5. 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 43 

ment of any one mental function or activity will 
improve others only in so far as they possess ele- 
ments common to it also. The amount of identical 
elements in different mental functions and the 
amount of general influence from special training 
are much less than common opinion supposes. 
The most common and surest source of general 
improvement of a capacity is to train it in many 
particular connections." 

"Identity of Procedure. The habit acquired in 
a laboratory course of looking to see how chem- 
icals do behave, instead of guessing at the matter 
or learning statements about it out of a book, may 
make a girl's methods of cooking or a boy's 
methods of manufacturing more scientific because 
the attitude of distrust of opinion and search for 
facts may so possess one as to be carried over 
from the narrower to the wider field. Difficulties 
in studies may prepare students for the difficulties 
of the world as a whole by cultivating the attitudes 
of neglect of discomfort, ideals of accomplishing 
what one sets out to do, and the feeling of dissatis- 
faction with failure." "In the case of the fea- 
tures of attitude and method, taking special pains 
that they are taught means in practice requiring 
their application to varied situations, for we can 
never be sure that a general idea or ideal or atti- 



44 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

tude is gained until we test it in application. 
Moreover in nine school children out of ten the 
only way that an ideal or attitude does become gen- 
eral is by being derived from and again applied to 
many different particular cases. To make ideals 
and attitudes operative in all fields the teacher 
must give them exercise in at least several fields." * 
"It is agreed that wherever practice in one 
exercise leads to improvement in another certain 
specific elements in both are identical and call 
forth identical responses which promote success 
in both exercises. The identical elements that 
are thus distinguished may be divided into two 
groups, those of content and those of form. As 
examples of content elements we may mention 
sounds, colors, letters, nonsense syllables, words, 
objects, kinds of geometrical figures, standards of 
measurement, ideas, etc. As one grows familiar 

1 Thorndike, Principles of Teaching, 1906, Chap. XV., "Formal Dis- 
cipline," pp. 240, 248. Similar opinions have recently been restated 
by Thorndike in his Educational Psychology, 191 Ed., Chap. IX., 
"The Relations between the Amounts of Different Traits in the Same 
Individual," pp. 186-8. "Modern psychology has sloughed off the fac- 
ulty psychology in its descriptions and analyses of mental life, but 
unfortunately reverts customarily to it when dealing with dynamic or 
functional relations. But it is just in the questions of mental 
dynamics and of the relationships of mental traits that we need to bear 
in mind the singularity and relative independence of every mental 
process, the thoroughgoing specialization of mind. The mind is really 
but the sum total of an individual's feelings and acts, of connections be- 
tween outside events and his responses thereto, and of the possibilities 
of having such feelings, acts and connections." 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 45 

with such elements, the power to remember them 
and to attend to them when they appear in new 
situations and to do what they suggest increases. 
The elements of form may be said to consist of 
the characteristics that the various situations 
present as problems for the attacking mind. Thus 
we recognize one situation as a problem of mem- 
orizing where from the nature of the material a 
particular method of committing to memory may 
be especially useful. Again, we recognize the 
need of particular adjustments of perception, such 
as movements which we have already practised. 
All situations demand adjustments of attention, 
some of which may invariably be necessary, while 
others may suit especially specific kinds of material. 
"We observe that elements of form and ele- 
ments of content are equally specific, equally 
capable of definition. Moreover, both are capable 
of generalization — that is, both are capable of 
appearing in a variety of settings. The problem 
of general training is, then, quite as much one of 
discipline in content, as it is of discipline in form. 
A better division of mental discipline for our pur- 
poses would be into two phases which we may 
denominate specific discipline and general disci- 
pline. Specific discipline consists in the analysis 
of the specific elements which are to be found to 



46 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

be critical in determining certain reactions, and 
in the practice by which the appropriate reaction 
is made the habitual response to each element thus 
discriminated. General discipline consists of train- 
ing in the recognition of these critical elements in 
a variety of situations. " 1 

"By a discipline of body we mean that through 
exercise of function and experience of a given sort 
a tendency or potentiality for action in that direc- 
tion is produced. ...... Correspondingly the mind 

when habituated to given ways of functioning is 

trained or disciplined in those directions 

Inasmuch as any physical work, no matter how 
complex, is made up of simple elements, it also fol- 
lows that these elements can be woven into mani- 
fold new combinations. Whenever a new activity 
involves an element already learned that part of 
the process does not need to be again mastered. 
However, it must be recognized that not only the 
element, but also its connections have to be con- 
sidered Similarly with mental operations. 

Almost any study involves elements that have been 
mastered in other connections. These elements 
are immediately serviceable But it must not 

1 Henderson, Education, May, 1909, "Formal Discipline from the 
Standpoint of Analytic and Experimental Psychology," pp. 609, 610. 
These paragraphs are repeated in Henderson, Text-Book in the Princi- 
ples of Education, 19 10, Chap. X, "The Question of Formal Discipline." 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 47 

be forgotten that the combination of old, and even 
perfectly familiar, elements is a difficult matter in 
itself. Old combinations may even be a hin- 
drance, especially if too fixed. Bad habits of 
walking, talking, writing, singing, or thinking are 
harder to modify than new ones are to inculcate. 

Most subjects of instruction have a great 

many similar elements. As far as they have sim- 
ilar elements they are valuable for each other. 
The greater the number of identical elements in 
the two, the greater the value. 

"Next in value to the elements of old knowledge 
which are utilized in learning new things there are 
certain ideals and attitudes toward work. There 
are no general faculties of attention, memory, and 
reason, which attend, memorize, and reason about 
one thing as well as another by simply 'connecting 
them up.' But there are habits of attending to 
things, of trying to memorize, trying to reason; 
in short, habits of striving for excellence, which 
are no mean possession. In fact, oftentimes the 
ideals of excellence and of application to duty are 
among the most valuable assets which the school- 
boy acquires." 1 

1 Bolton, Principles of Education, 1910, Chap. XXVIII., "General 
Discipline and Educational Values," pp. 757-9. An informal article by 
Bolton in the School Review, February, 1904, "Facts and Fictions Con- 
cerning Educational Values," foreshadowed this lengthy discussion. 



48 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

"In any event, it is desirable that the teacher 
should rid himself of the notion that 'thinking' 
is a simple unalterable faculty; that he should 
recognize that it is a term denoting the various 
ways in which things acquire significance. It 
is desirable to expel also the kindred notion that 
some subjects are inherently 'intellectual,' and 
hence possessed of an almost magical power to 
train the faculty of thought. Thinking is specific, 
not a machine-like, ready-made apparatus to be 
turned indifferently and at will upon all subjects, 
as a lantern may throw its light as it happens upon 
horses, streets, gardens, trees, or river. Thinking 
is specific, in that different things suggest their 
own appropriate meanings, tell their own unique 
stories, and in that they do this in very different 
ways with different persons. As the growth of 
the body is through the assimilation of food, so 
the growth of mind is through the logical organiza- 
tion of subject-matter. Thinking is not like a 
sausage machine which reduces all materials in- 
differently to one marketable commodity, but is a 
power of following up and linking together the 
specific suggestions that specific things arouse." 

This article might well have been represented in the quotations in our 
first edition; but when we first saw the article we had already outlined 
our discussion and had selected quotations expressing in a more compact 
way the main ideas discussed by Bolton. 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 49 

"The so-called faculty-psychology went hand in 
hand with the vogue of the formal-discipline idea 
in education. If thought is a distinct piece of 
mental machinery, separate from observation, 
memory, imagination, and common-sense judg- 
ments of persons and things, then thought should 
be trained by special exercises designed for the 
purpose, as one might devise special exercises for 
developing the biceps muscle. Certain subjects 
are then to be regarded as intellectual or logical 
subjects par excellence, possessed of a predestined 
fitness to exercise the thought-faculty, just as 
certain machines are better than others for de- 
veloping arm power. With these three notions 
goes the fourth, that method consists of a set of 
operations by which the machinery of thought 
is set going and kept at work upon any subject- 
matter. 

"We have tried to make it clear in the previous 
chapters that there is no single and uniform power 
of thought, but a multitude of different ways in 
which specific things — things observed, remem- 
bered, heard of, read about — evoke suggestions or 
ideas that are pertinent to the occasion and fruitful 
in the sequel. Training is such development of 
curiosity, suggestion, and habits of exploring and 
testing, as increases their scope and efficiency. A 



50 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

subject — any subject — is intellectual in the degree 
in which with any given person it succeeds in effect- 
ing this growth. On this view the fourth factor, 
method, is concerned with providing conditions so 
adapted to individual needs and powers as to make 
for the permanent improvement of observation, 
suggestion, and investigation." * 

"Thinking power is not an abstract and gen- 
eral power of the mind to be applied equally 
well in all sorts of situations. It is rather a function 
of some larger whole, varying with the degree of 
development of that larger whole. That larger 
knowledge includes special knowledge of facts and 
special training in the technique of the subject. 
The good thinker in mathematics may be a very 
poor thinker in economics or sociology, and vice 
versa. The habit of care in the examination of 
data, in the analysis of a situation, etc., may be 
carried over from one department to the other, but 
the special knowledge and the training in the spe- 
cial technique of one may be of little or no use in 
the other. The thinking process falls within sys- 
tems of organized fact, as well as being a factor 
in the organization of material." 

"If these things are so, we delude ourselves when 

1 Dewey, How We Think, 1910, pp. 38, 39, 45, 46. Dewey's ad- 
dress in Science, January 28, 1910, on "Science as Subject-Matter and 
as Method" leans a little toward formal discipline. 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 51 

we think of such a thing as training children to 
think apart from the process of building up a body 
of knowledge. Again, there may be subjects of 
study which we feel are valuable because of the 
fact that they are specially adapted to the train- 
ing of the child to think. But if the stock of ideas 
in which this subject deals is one which will seldom 
or never be drawn upon in his thinking in any other 
connection than as a subject of study, of what 
value does this training in thinking become to him? 
If we are to train children of any age to think, 
one of the factors in this process is the building 
up of a system of definite and exact knowledge of 
facts within the sphere in which the problems of 
thought are to arrive." x 

The following scattered references for the year 
19 10 show that the theory of specific disciplines is 
becoming more and more influential in educational 
literature, even when the problem itself is not 
definitely discussed. Snedden 2 makes it the basis 
for a plea for special vocational training as dis- 
tinguished from the so-called cultural education, 
"vocational efficiency being something to be at- 
tained by specialized endeavor, and along lines de- 

1 Miller, Psychology of Thinking, 1909, p. 149. 

2 Snedden, Problem of Vocational Education, 1910, "The Relation of 
Vocational to Cultural Education," pp. 71-7. See also Main, Educa- 
tional Agriculture, 1910, Western State Normal School, Hays, Kansas. 



52 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

termined by its needs." Arnold 1 inveighs against 
the influence of the theory of formal discipline in 
over-emphasizing some subjects as "essentials" for 
the classification and promotion of school-children. 
His own conclusion is that "by the 'essentials' is 
meant basic elements in all subjects rather than 
amplified matter in a few." In outlining some 
experiments on memory, Whipple 2 says that "the 
transfer of practice from the specially trained form 
of memory to other forms of memory would ap- 
pear, from theoretical grounds, to be limited to 
those cases in which the material, content, or form 
of procedure of the other forms were related to the 
material, content, or form of procedure of the 
trained form." In outlining experiments to be 
carried out in teaching educational psychology, 
Dearborn 3 gives the following directions for 
experiments on the "transference of practice." 
"Further tests on the general influence of spe- 
cial practice of the sort indicated in the pre- 
ceding experiments may also be made in memory 
and by repeating the usual experiment at first 
employed by James. Before beginning the prac- 
tice with vocabularies or other matter — which 

1 Arnold, School and Class Management, Vol. II., 1910, "The Theory 
of Formal Discipline," pp. 59-65. See also Colgrove, The Teacher and 
the School, 1910, pp. 125, 350. 

2 Whipple, Manual of Mental and Physical Tests, 1910, p. 384. 

8 Dearborn, Journal of Educational Psychology, September, 1910, 
"Experiments in Learning," p. 387. 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 53 

is usually spoken of as the practice series — the 
student may commit to memory a limited amount 
of other sorts of material and by learning a 
similar set after the end of the vocabulary prac- 
tice — this is the test series — may note the effect of 
the practice on the latter. These results should be 
checked by having another class or a part of the 
same class learn the test material at the same in- 
tervals of time, but without doing the practice 
series. It may thus be at least roughly determined 
how much of the improvement is due to the test 
series itself and how much to the practice." 
Finally, we make a third group of quotations, 
those from authors who combine both adherence 
and opposition to the doctrine of formal disci- 
pline. These authors take about the same posi- 
tion as do those of the second group, but they 
lay greater emphasis upon the extended usable- 
ness of the common elements of subject-matter 
and especially of method in many functions. 
There is little reason for the third group to be 
considered as upholders of the doctrine of formal 
discipline and as opposed to the doctrine of speci- 
fic disciplines. And there is also little reason for 
one group to criticise the other. They both really 
modify the old formalist doctrine for the same 
reason, limiting the transfer of acquired ability 



54 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

to the common elements in the processes involved. 
However, the critics of the third group have done 
good service in cautioning against extremes and 
in suggesting many relations between functions, 
which were not thought of before. 

"Each of the numerous habits of the brain 
means tendencies to the excitement of localised 
tracts and paths under given physical conditions. 
An excitement passing over one set of paths leads 
to one system of external movements, e. g. y from 
eye centre to hand centre, when one sees and then 
grasps. If circumstances vary the paths, they vary 
the motor results Whatever has hap- 
pened to the brain in the past has meant some 
definite and usually sharply localised interchange 
of induced activities among its elements. Every 
such interchange has altered the minutest structure 
of all the elements concerned, has established 
localised paths between them for future inductions 
to follow. They can never act again precisely as 
they would have done had they not acted once in 
just this way. And this is what is meant by saying 
that the brain forms its habits. One must now, in 
addition, note that this formation of habits may 
occur in the most subtle fashions. Parts that have 
often functioned together tend to function more 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 55 

easily together again. This is true down to the 
minutest detail of localised functions. But what 
is still more significant for all our higher 
mental life is, that general forms or types of ac- 
tivity, however subtle their nature, when once they 
have resulted from a given exchange of induced 
activities {due to sensory stimulations) , may tend 
thereby to become henceforth more easily re- 
excited, so that habits of our brain may come to 
be fixed, not merely as to the mere routine which 
leads to this or to that special act, but as to the 
general ways in which acts are done. A given 
'set' of the brain as a whole, that is, a given sort 
of preparedness to be influenced in a certain way 
— yes, even a given tendency to change, under 
particular conditions, our more specific fashions of 
activity— may thus become a matter of relatively 
or of entirely fixed habits. ...... It is indeed 

true that, owing to the localised character of the 
phenomena which determine single habits, the 
training of one specialized cerebral function, in 
any particular case, may not result in the training 
of some other specialized function, even where 
we, viewing the matter from without, have sup- 
posed that these two functions were very inti- 
mately connected. The question as to what effect 



$6 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

the training of any one special function will have 
upon other functions, or upon the general ten- 
dencies of the brain, is therefore always a question 
to be answered by specific experience. This the 
teacher, in estimating the effects of new educa- 
tional devices upon the pupils, must always re- 
member." (Royce.) 1 

' Training in any exercise that requires skill 
undoubtedly increases more general habits of ac- 
curate perception and methods of eliminating use- 
less movements that are transferable to other 
movements with other parts of the body. So, too, 
with memory, in the usual logical learning the fac- 
tors involved are in large measure common to 
memories of related subjects. You cannot be sure 
that any fact is absolutely unrelated to any other, 
and so far as they are related, learning the one 
makes easier learning the other. In both rote and 
logical learning there are definite habits and 
capacities of attending to be acquired, and these 
may apparently be acquired in one field, and used 
in another. We have to do in memory, then, with 
a large number of fairly distinct physiological 
capacities, but their use has become so dependent 
upon habits common to the different capacities 
that they are functionally parts of a common 

1 Royce, Outlines of Psychology, 1903, pp. 67-70. 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 57 

whole. Training one part thus trains related 
parts, and the whole in some degree." (Pills- 
bury. ) * 

"To affirm that when the mind is trained in 
one direction it is first of all trained in that di- 
rection and not in some other is one thing; to 
affirm, however, that the training in one direction 
has no influence in other directions is quite a differ- 
ent affair. No one, I think, would be quite so rash 
as to make the latter assertion; but many would 
believe that such a transfer of training is in most 
cases slight, and in some cases such a transfer is 

not probable, even in the slightest degree 

Such persons may try to bring definiteness into 
their conceptions as to the extent of this transfer, 
by saying that such a transfer can take place where 
there is a similar situation, and where like elements 
are involved; but it must be remembered that sim- 
ilarity and likeness are not primarily objective 
categories, but that they are constituted by the 
mind of the person who finds such similarity or 
likeness, and that it is never certain beforehand just 
where this similarity and likeness is to be found." 

"Transfer of training is possible in the ways in- 
dicated : ( 1 ) Where a single element to which a 

1 Pillsbury, Educational Review, June, 1908, "The Effects of Train- 
ing on Memory," pp. 26, 27. 



58 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

specific response is made functions under various 
environmental conditions because it is a common 
element in these various, and otherwise to a greater 
or less degree, dissimilar environments; (2) 
When a dominant mood or emotion so colors vari- 
ous environments that a characteristic response is 
obtained without identity of any one objective con- 
dition; (3) Where a single response in reality in- 
volves other and more general adjustments; (4) 
it is also possible, as Bagley suggests, through 
making the end of the activity a clearly conscious 
ideal. In this case the transfer takes place by a di- 
rect carrying over by consciousness not of the 
activity itself, but of the purpose of the activity, 
to another field." 

"I believe that it is possible in the light of all 
the evidence presented on the subject of transfer 
to lay down with tolerable certainty a few rules 
of procedure. ( 1 ) The first rule should be : 
Make those specific activities which you wish to 
transfer the object of thought. Let the signifi- 
cance of the habit and its general bearings become 
known to the person who is the subject of the 
training ( 2 ) Train the child in the tech- 
nique of learning and in the processes that make 
learning effective and economical. Nearly all the 
investigations emphasize the value of properly 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 59 

adapted attention, of satisfactory physical and 
mental attitudes in securing transfer. Sustained 
attention should be developed in the school train- 
ing, not merely for the sake of the object attended 
to (perhaps not primarily for the object's sake), 

but rather for the sake of attention itself 

(3) In seeking to secure transfer, especially where 
purpose does not play an important part, see to it 
that the stimulus which is to call forth the desired 
reaction is such that it may be a common element 
in many objective situations (4) Educa- 
tion should cultivate through specific training gen- 
eral emotional attitudes. Moods and feelings 
often are the dominant elements in a situation and 
these can be readily transferred, I believe." 

The author then makes application of his the- 
ories in discussing the comparative disciplinary 
values of pure and applied science. "My own 
conclusions would be that pure science is of greater 
disciplinary value because (1) through the facts 
which it presents, ideas of procedure and of truth 
may be developed which function in a wider human 
experience, greatly to the uplift of the race; (2) the 
content and method of pure science is such that 
it has a broader field of application than has ap- 
plied science, and can function as an identical or 
similar element in more situations than can applied 



6o MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

science; (3) the emotion which the pure seeking 
after truth arouses is higher and less likely to be 
deadened by other emotions than are the ideals of 
economic improvement and social betterment, 
which are the aims of an applied science." 1 

"Three points will show the possibilities 
of benefit from special training beyond the specific 
line of reaction subjected to practice. 1. The 
habit pathways may altogether or in part be com- 
mon to two or to many operations perhaps exter- 
nally very different 2. The method of 

procedure in a special habit may evidently be ap- 
plicable to a much larger field 3. Mental 

attitudes or ideals tend by chance variation and by 
suggestion to extend their sphere of action. 

"With this threefold possibility in mind, it is 
evident that there are three principles for the 
teacher to follow, each with a retinue of many 
corollaries, (a) He may select in a given field 
habits fundamental or common to the widest range, 
and drill on similar applications of these habits, 
while at the same time avoiding the habits that 
would interfere, (b) He may secure valuable 
methods of procedure and emphasize the attitude 
of mind as generally important in life. Narrow- 

1 Colvin, Some Facts in Partial Justification of the So-Called Dogma 
of Formal Discipline, 1909 and 1910, University of Illinois. 



REVIEW OF DISCUSSIONS 61 

ness, formalism, dogmatism, and a host of unfor- 
tunate elements in the method of procedure are to 
be avoided, while breadth, organization, criticism, 
and others advantageous are to be retained, (c) 
Finally he may not only develop definitely the 
ideals of action as generally applicable and to be 
applied, but may also increase the suggestibility of 
the habit taught, by substituting for chance sug- 
gestion specific applications in as many directions 
as possible, thus extending the likelihood of future 
application. Breadth of knowledge and of train- 
ing will count very greatly in widening out a 
teacher's work and filling it with suggestion. It 
is evident that reviews from varying points of 
view, and other schemes for assisting the child to 
generalize or organize, all add to the possibility 
of suggestion." 1 

A doubtful middle position between theories 
of general discipline and of specific disciplines 
is that shown by Charters in discussing "the spe- 
cific and tonic functions of subject-matter." "Just 
as quinine has a specific function in its selective ac- 
tion upon poisons of the blood in malaria and kin- 
dred diseases, and has also a tonic action upon the 
whole body as a result of this specific action, so the 

1 Rowe, Habit-Formation and the Science of Teaching, 1909, pp. 243- 
250. There is confusion here between (b) and (c). 



62 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

study of subject-matter has both a specific and a 
tonic function. 1 Each unit has a specific point of 
attack, a particular problem to solve, or need to 
satisfy, and in addition, the acquisition of the unit 
produces a certain exercise of the whole mental 
system somewhat general in its action and elevat- 
ing to the tone of the system In all these 

cases we are able to discriminate between the value 
which is being consciously pursued and the wider, 
more indefinite systemic values which flow from 
the effort necessary to carry out this specific func- 
tion, values of which the one putting forth the 

effort is, perhaps, quite unconscious For the 

most part, the term 'tonic' refers to the fact that 
the way in which some of these values are gained 
and, particularly, the disciplinary value, is by the 
exercise of mental processes which are heightened 
in tone by the very fact of being exercised." 2 

1 But the effects of mental training do not circulate in the blood as 
do the molecules of quinine taken as medicine. 

2 Charters, Methods of l caching, 1909, pp. 37-9- 



CHAPTER III 

REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 

Space will not allow descriptions of all the ex- 
periments so far made, which furnish evidence in 
regard to the doctrine of formal discipline. 
Rather than give a brief summary of each experi- 
ment, we have deemed it more profitable to de- 
scribe typical and important ones, using as far as 
possible the words of those who conducted them. 
We have not considered it wise or even just, at 
this stage of the investigation, to enter into a de- 
tailed criticism of these experiments; but we have 
tried to select the most valuable experiments, 
have let the experimenters speak for themselves, 
and have left to the reader the responsibility of 
weighing their evidence. Care has been taken to 
describe experiments which seem to favor the 
doctrine of formal discipline, as well as those 
which seem to oppose it. The results of the 
other experiments are briefly stated in the sum- 
maries mentioned. We are not specially con- 
cerned with the large number of experiments on 

63 



64 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

the effect of practice and the formation of habits 
is only one function. The reader is referred to 
the recent summaries of these by Ellison, 1 Bag- 
ley, 2 and Whipple. 3 Our special concern is with 
experiments on the transfer of the effect of 
practice from one function to another. Sum- 
maries of most of these latter experiments are 
given by several of the authors mentioned in our 
bibliography. 

Although the experimenters variously interpret 
the bearing of their results on the doctrine of 
formal discipline, they differ mainly as to the ex- 
tent to which the effect of practice in one function 
can be transferred to other functions having 
elements in common with it. This transfer re- 
sults in either improvement of or interference with 
the other functions, according to whether the com- 
mon elements are used in a similar or in a different 
way in the associations of these functions as com- 
pared with those of the first. As some elements 
are common to many functions, practice with them 
results in abilities of wide usableness. This wide- 
spread transfer has caused many students to over- 
look or even deny the specific character of 

1 Ellison, Pedagogical Seminary, March, 1909, "The Acquisition of 
Technical Skill." 

2 Bagley, Psychological Bulletin, March, 1909. "The Psychology of 
School Practice." 

3 Whipple, Manual of Mental and Physical Tests, 1910. 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 6s 

the habits thus usable in many associations. 
Especially is this true in regard to elements of 
method, because they are usually common to more 
functions than are elements of subject-matter, the 
number of distinct methods being more limited 
and their range and applicability wider. 

There have been several experiments on cross- 
education, or the improvement in an activity, in- 
volving one part of the body, as the result of im- 
provement through practice in a similar activity, 
involving a bilaterally symmetrical part of the 
body. The results of most of these experiments 
have been summarized by Davis * and the writers 
previously mentioned. The improvement in the 
second activity in such experiments can be ex- 
plained as due to two causes. In the first place, 
both activities are very similar and probably in- 
volve in part the same centres in the nervous sys- 
tem. Though bilaterally symmetrical parts of 
the body are controlled in part through cortical 
centres in different hemispheres, they are also 

1 Davis, Yale Psychological Studies, 1898, "Researches upon Cross- 
Education." We have not considered it necessary to refer separately 
to the several American and German experiments on cross-education, 
as they are all more or less similar in principle. They can easily be 
found by reference to the bibliographies and summaries mentioned. 
The allusion in the Pedagogical Seminary, January, 1910, to German 
experiments on transfer must have referred only to those on cross- 
education, as those by Ebert and Meumann are the only ones on 
other phases of transfer that we have been able to find. We know of 
no French experiments on these other phases of transfer. 



66 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

probably controlled in part through lower centres 
which serve for both sides of the body. The im- 
provement in the second activity is therefore 
probably due to the use in part of the same 
centres in both activities. In the second place, the 
improvement is due to the working out, in con- 
nection with the first activity, of a method of how 
to perform the act, and then to the use of this 
method in guiding the second activity. 1 The use 
of this method in guiding the second activity is as 
different from the transfer of acquired ability as 
the knowledge of how to do is different from the 
ability to do. Such knowledge may lead to abil- 
ity, but in itself it is not ability. (See our later 
discussion of both these points.) The first five 
experiments here described represent the methods 
and results of all those on cross-education. 

i. The following experiments were conducted 
by Smith at Yale University, under the direction 
of Scripture : 

"The measure of accuracy was the ability to 
insert the needle into a single hole 0.1285 inches 
in diameter. The vertical metal plate containing 
the hole was placed directly in front of the ob- 
server; the right fore-arm was rested on the edge 
of the table; the stick was grasped like a pencil 

1 Book, Psychology of Skill, pp. 109 (note), 166. 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 67 

and by a steady movement of the hand and wrist 
the metal point was inserted in the hole. Any 
contact of the point against the side of the hole 
was counted an error. The per cent, of success- 
ful insertions was considered the measure of 

accuracy 

"The first set consisted of twenty experiments 
with the left hand; the result was 50 per cent, of 
successful trials. Immediately thereafter twenty 
experiments were made with the right hand, with 
a result of 60 per cent, of successful trials. On 
the following day and on each successive day two 
hundred experiments were taken with the right 
hand, the same conditions in regard to time, bodily 
condition and position in making the experiments 
being maintained as far as possible. The per- 
centage of successful trials ran as follows: 61, 64, 

6 5> 75> 74> 75i 82 > 79> 78, 88. 

"On the 10th day the left hand was tested with 
twenty experiments as before, with 76 per cent. 
of successful trials, thus showing an increase of 
twenty-six per cent, without practice in the time 
during which the right hand had gained as shown 
by the figures above 

"From the results of these two thousand ex- 
periments the following conclusions seem justi- 
fied: 



68 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

(i.) Steadiness of movement can be increased 
by practice. 

(2.) This increase of steadiness is not limited 
to the control of the muscles immediately 
trained but affects the control of the corres- 
ponding muscles on the opposite side of the 
body. 

(3.) This training seems to be of a psychical 
rather than of a physical order and to lie 
principally in steadiness of attention." 1 

2. The following experiments were conducted 
by Davis with six graduate students at Yale 
University : 

"At the initial test the subject's clothing was 
removed from the upper part of his body. His 
weight was then taken and his strength of fore- 
arm, or grip, measured by the usual spring dyna- 
mometer. The following measurements were 
then made: right and left upper arm both flexed 
and extended; right and left forearm with and 
without the hand clenched. These measurements 
were taken at the largest circumferences of the 
arm above and below the elbow. The weight (a 
23/2 kilo, dumbbell) was then given to the subject, 
who was instructed to lift it from a position where 

1 Scripture, Smith, and Brown, Yale Psychological Studies, 1894. 
"On the Education of Muscular Control and Power/' pp. 115-118. 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 69 

the arm hangs extended downward and the weight 
is supported from the shoulder, to one where 
the arm is flexed and the weight close to the 
shoulder. In this movement the elbow remains 
stationary. Hence, to accomplish this act, the 
biceps is employed almost wholly, though the 
muscles of the forearm are also used to a lesser 
extent in gripping the dumbbell. This gripping 
was intensified toward the end of the test, when 
the subject became fatigued 

"The subject then entered upon a practice ex- 
tending from two to four weeks ; this consisted in 
simple flexions of the right arm with the 
weight 

"At the final test the same data were obtained 
in the same way and under the same conditions as 
at the initial test. Additional data were also ob- 
tained." 

The following summary gives the results of 
several tests made of the right and the left arm, 
before and after practice of the right arm with 
the dumbbell. The six subjects averaged 26 ]/ 2 
years of age, 14^ days of practice, and 310 flex- 
ions of the right arm in daily practice. The aver- 
age girth gain in mm. of biceps, contracted, was 
— right 61/3, left 2 5/6 ; the average girth gain of 
forearm, contracted, was — right 4 $/6 } left 2 1/6; 



7 o MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

the average gain in number of flexions made with 
the dumbbell was — right 757, left 178; the aver- 
age gain in strength of grip as measured by the 
dynamometer, in kilos, was — right 5.56, left 5.41. 

The author gives the following conclusions 
from his own experiments and those made by 
others : 

"a. The effects of exercise may be transferred 
to a greater or less degree from the parts prac- 
ticed to other parts of the body. This transfer- 
ence is greatest to symmetrical and closely related 
parts. 

"b. There is a close connection between dif- 
ferent parts of the muscular system through nerv- 
ous means. This connection is closer between 
parts related in function or in position. 

"c. Will power and attention are educated by 
physical training. When developed by any special 
act they are developed for all other acts. 

"With conclusions b and c established the ex- 
planation of the transference is probably reached. 
There is no doubt that the most important effects 
of muscular practice are central rather than peri- 
pheral. The central effects may be distinguished 
as: (1) those dependent on the development of 
motor centres, that is, their improvement through 
exercise; (2) those dependent on the development 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 71 

of physical factors, notably attention and will 
power. Of these two effects we would emphasize 
the first as the most important." 1 

3. With three or four subjects Bair made a 
large number of experiments in typewriting and 
various other movements in order to measure "the 
interference taking place when a sense impression 
or a series of sense impressions to which we have 
previously responded with a movement or series of 
movements are now responded to by a different 
movement or series of movements." The author's 
conclusions most pertinent to our problem are as 
follows: "If after the responses have been re- 
peated many times to a certain serial order of 
stimuli, and then either the order of the stimuli, 
the order of responses to stimuli, or both, are 
changed, there will be a considerable rise in the 
practice curve, of errors when the time is kept con- 
stant, or of increased time when the errors are kept 
constant In none of these three cases, how- 
ever, when, in one order, a number of practices 
sufficient to approach the proficiency limit were 
made, did the curve rise as high, when the change 
was made as it started in the first practice." This 
difference between the rise due to supposed in- 

1 Davis, Yale Psychological Studies, 1898, "Researches upon Cross- 
Education," pp. 18-29, 49, 50. 



72 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

terference and the greater rise in the beginning of 
the first practice, Bair attributes to the transfer of 
the effects of practice. "If our results justify us 
in drawing any conclusions, we might say that 
special practice or training gives general ability, 
or learning to do one thing gives us capacity to do 
other things, or the same thing in different ways," * 

4. The following experiments were made by 
Swift with five University students in "keeping two 
solid rubber balls going with one hand, catching 
and throwing one while the other is in the air." 

"The daily programme consisted of ten series, 
the subject in each case continuing the throwing 
until he failed to catch one or both of the balls. 
This constituted one series. The number of 
catches made in each series was immediately re- 
corded, with any data obtainable as to the method 

pursued and the cause of failure All the 

subjects knew their daily score, and they always 
kept track of their progress during each test as well 

as from day to day The daily training was 

continued in the case of four subjects until the 
average number of catches for each series exceeded 
100, or, what amounts to the same thing, 1,000 
catches in ten series, for two days in succession." 

1 Bair, Psychological Review Monographs, 1902, Vol. V., No. 19, 
"The Practice Curve," pp. 39, 45. 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 73 

"The throwing and catching of the regular tests 
was with the right hand (all the subjects were 
right-handed), but in order to ascertain the effect 
of right-handed practice upon the skill of the left 
hand, a preliminary test was made upon each sub- 
ject, on the first day of his practice, of his un- 
tutored skill with the left hand. This preliminary 
test consisted of ten series as usual; and after this 
the left hand was not again tried until after the 
completion of the whole period of work with the 
right hand, when the left hand was again tested 
and a record of its progress kept for a number of 
days." 

"1. The record of the first day of regular left- 
hand training is in all cases higher than the prelim- 
inary test, though in no case had the left hand been 
practiced with the balls during the interval. More 
than this, the score never drops to the level of this 
preliminary test, which shows that the gain was 
permanent. 

"2. The left-hand curves bear a striking re- 
semblance in general form to the corresponding 
right-hand ones, with this difference that in all but 
one case they ascend much more rapidly 

"3. All of the subjects made a better score 
with their left hand on the first day of its regular 



74 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

practice than they had been able to do with their 
right at the beginning of the work." 

"The conclusion is unavoidable that in the ma- 
jority of cases the training of the right hand was 
somehow effective upon the left also. The same 
general result has been noticed by many observers 
engaged in different lines of investigation. The 
chief point of interest is to discover how the effect 
is produced. Is it due to some purely peripheral 
change, or to some alteration in the central nervous 
system, or, finally, to some method or plan of work 
that may be applied equally well in the case of 
either hand, as, for example, the knowledge of 
spelling which a man could use as well in writing 
in mirror script as in the ordinary way? It is not 
impossible that cases could be found that would 
exhibit the co-operation of all three. In the ball- 
tossing there was evidence, certainly, of the last 
two. All the subjects were able to make use with 
the left hand of the methods of handling the balls, 
and of recovering control of them after an ill- 
directed throw, which had been developed in the 
right-hand practice. In all the cases but one a 
good deal of less conscious facility (of a sort that 
might indicate some kind of symmetrical training 
of the central nervous system) was probably pres- 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 75 

ent. The subjects were able at once to build in the 
sub-structure of central (or neuro-muscular) skill, 
and so to learn the art of left-hand throwing much 
more quickly than the right. The mental element, 
the power to comprehend and meet a situation, 
is evidently, then, in most cases, the more difficult 
part of the complex muscular feats of skill, since 
the right hand, if taken first, needs so much more 
time for the learning than the left, notwithstand- 
ing its greater general facility in such movements 
in right-handed people." 

"It would be a mistake to suppose that such ex- 
periments in cross-education give support to the 
doctrine of 'formal education.' There is no evi- 
dence to show that training has general value. 
Indeed, it all argues strongly for the influence of 

content The right hand has had a great 

variety of training that ought to bring it along rap- 
idly in ball-tossing on the principle of formal 
training, but this investigation shows just the re- 
verse. The right hand learns it very slowly, but 
the special training that comes from doing a spe- 
cific thing, enables the left hand, awkward and 
stiff as it is, to get control of the situation in about 
one-third of the time required by the right. Skill 
in certain lines may be serviceable in other similar 



76 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

processes, but its value decreases as the difference 
between the kinds of work increases, and in many 
cases it is probably reduced to zero." * 

5. A recently reported experiment on cross- 
education is that by Starch: "The experiment 
consisted of tracing the outline of a six-pointed 
star as seen in a mirror The experi- 
ment as performed by the students is as follows: 
(a) Tracing one-half of one outline with the left 
hand. (b) Tracing ten complete outlines with 
the right hand, (c) Tracing another half with 
the left hand. The results are then tabulated to 
show the exact time and number of errors of each 
tracing." 

"The effect of practice with the right hand upon 
the left hand is very considerable. One tracing 
was made with the left hand before and one after 
the practice with the right hand. The improve- 
ment with the right hand from the first to the last 
record (100) was 84 per cent, in time and 92 per 
cent, in errors, average 88 per cent. The improve- 
ment of the record with the left hand, made after, 
compared with the one made before, the right 
hand practice, was 85 per cent, in time and 81 per 
cent, in errors, average 83 per cent. Another sub- 

1 Swift, Mind in the Making, 1908, Chap. VI., "The Psychology of 
Learning." 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 77 

ject who made fifty tracings with the right hand 
showed an improvement of 82 per cent., and in the 
before and after tracings with the left hand 68 per 
cent. Ten laboratory students who made ten rec- 
ords each with the right hand improved on the 
average 53 per cent. In the before and after rec- 
ords, tracing with the left hand half of one outline 
each time, the average improvement was 49 per 
cent. Taking these results together they show that 
the left hand profits to the extent of 90 per cent, 
of the gain made by the right hand. From this, 
however a small amount must be subtracted which 
is due to the practice derived from the first left 
hand tracing." 1 

Other recently reported experiments are those 
by Wallin on the transfer of the effects of practice 
from one eye to the other and from the fovea 
to the peripheral retina. The closeness of the 
nervous connection between the parts used, the 
large number of similar nerve elements involved, 
and the evident effect of learning how to meet the 
requirements of the tests are sufficient to explain 
the results without recourse to Wallin's statement 
that "the doctrine of formal discipline, all but 
repudiated in this day of educational vandalism, is 

1 Starch, Psychological Bulletin, January, 19 10, "A Demonstration of 
the Trial and Error Method in Learning." 



78 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

still good pedagogical doctrine under certain lim- 
itations." 

6. The following experiments were conducted 
by Thorndike and Woodworth at Columbia Uni- 
versity : 

"Individuals practiced estimating the areas of 
rectangles from 10 to ioo sq. cm. in size until 
a very marked improvement was attained. The 
improvement in accuracy for areas of the same 
size but of different shape due to this training was 
only 44 per cent, as great as that for areas of 
the same shape and size. For areas of the same 
shape but from 140-300 sq. cm. in size the im- 
provement was 30 per cent, as great. For areas 
of different shape and from 140-400 sq. cm. in size 
the improvement was 52 per cent, as great. 

"Training in estimating weights of from 40-120 
grams resulted in only 39 per cent, as much im- 
provement as in estimating weights from 120 to 
1800 grams. Training in estimating lines from .5 
to 1.5 inches long (resulting in a reduction of error 
to 25 per cent, of the initial amount) resulted in 
no improvement in the estimation of lines 6-12 
inches long. 

"Training in perceiving words containing e and 
s gave a certain amount of improvement in speed 
and accuracy in that special ability. In the ability 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 79 

to perceive words containing i and t, s and p, c 
and a, e and r, a and n, 1 and o, misspelled words 
and A's, there was an improvement of only 39 
per cent, as much as in the ability specially trained, 
and in accuracy of only 25 per cent, as much. 
Training in perceiving English verbs gave a re- 
duction in time of nearly 21 per cent, and of 
omissions of 70 per cent. The ability to perceive 
other parts of speech showed a reduction in time 
of 3 per cent., but an increase in omissions of over 
100 per cent." 1 

7. The following experiments were conducted 
by Squire and others at the Montana State Nor- 
mal College : 

"Careful experiments were undertaken to de- 
termine whether the habit of producing neat 
papers in arithmetic will function with reference 
to neat written work in other studies; the tests 
were confined to the intermediate grades. The 
results are almost startling in their failure to 
show the slightest improvement in language and 
spelling papers, although the improvement in the 

1 Thorndike, Educational Psychology, 1903 Ed., Chap. VIII., "The 
Influence of Special Forms of Training upon More General Abilities," 
p. 90. These experiments are described in detail in three articles in 
the Psychological Review, 1901, "The Influence of Improvement in one 
Mental Function upon the Efficiency of Other Functions." They have 
been criticised by Coover and Angell (F.), American Journal of 
Psychology, July, 1907, "General Practice Effect of Special Exercise," 
p. 308. 



80 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

arithmetic papers was noticeable from the very 
first." 1 

8. The following experiments were carried 
out by Ruediger in the seventh grade of three 
schools to prove whether "the ideal of neat- 
ness, brought out in connection with, and applied 
in one subject, functions in other school subjects." 
The outline of the methods used in these experi- 
ments is too long to be quoted here. Neatness 
was emphasized in the written work, etc., of one 
subject, until the pupils showed decided improver 
ment in that subject. The ideal of neatness was 
continually discussed by the teacher in connection 
with that one subject and with life generally, 
though no special allusion was made to the other 
school subjects. Then the written work in these 
other subjects, before and after the experiment, 
was compared to see whether the ideal of neat- 
ness had been carried over to them in such a way 
as to produce similar improvement in them. The 
results are summed up in the following paragraph : 

"Evidently neatness made conscious as an ideal 
or aim in connection with only one school subject 
does function in other subjects. Directing our 
attention to groups [schools] I and III, the most 

1 Bagley, Educative Process, 1905, Chap. XIII., "Formal versus In- 
trinsic Values of Experience: The Doctrine of Formal Discipline," 
p. 208. 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 81 

marked improvement of the papers occurred re- 
spectively in geography and in arithmetic, the 
subjects in which neatness was emphasized, but 
there was unquestionable improvement on the 
average also in other subjects. In group I the 
average grades [in neatness] in geography show 
an improvement of 5 points, and those in arith- 
metic and grammar respectively 4 and 3.4 points; 
while in group III arithmetic improved 4.5 points, 
and geography and history respectively 2.9 and 2 
points. The number of pupils showing improve- 
ment is about the same in all the subjects. In 
group II the improvement was in no case very 
marked, but it is significant that the averages show 
nowhere any decline." * 

9. The following experiment was conducted 
by Judd at Yale University: 

"A person who was to be tested was seated in 
such a position that his right hand and arm were 
entirely hidden from view by a large screen. 
Whatever he did with this right hand would, 
therefore, be unseen by him. On the left side of 
the screen and in full view, nine different lines 
were shown in succession, and he was required to 
place a pencil held in the unseen right hand in the 

1 Ruediger, Educational Review, November, 1908, "The Indirect Im- 
provement of Mental Functions through Ideals," p. 369. 



82 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

direction indicated by the several lines seen be- 
fore him. The errors made in placing the pencil 
were accurately measured and recorded. A 
standard of comparison was thus gained by which 
all later results could be valued. The next step 
in the experiment was to train the person being 
tested to more accurate localization of one special 
line, which for purposes of our description we 
may call No. 5. With this one line, No. 5, the 
reactor was given fuller visual experience and the 
error which he at first made with this line gradu- 
ally disappeared. After this clear improvement 
with No. 5 the original conditions were restored, 
and the reactor was again tested as at first with all 
nine lines. Every line in the series was effected. 
This means that there had been a transfer of 
effects under the conditions of the training de- 
scribed. 

"This, however, was not all. Some of the 
lines had shown in the first series of tests an error 
in the same direction as line No. 5 ; others showed 
an error in the opposite direction. The transfer 
of practice differed in the two kinds of cases in 
that those lines which had a like error with No. 
5 improved with No. 5, while the lines which had 
errors in the opposite direction to No. 5 grew 
worse as a result of practice with No. 5. The 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 83 

transfer of practice was no less real in the case 
of the lines which increased in error than in the 
case of the lines which improved. Both kinds of 
cases show that the functions involved are inter- 
dependent, and that transfer of practice is a com- 
plex process which must be studied from a variety 
of points of view if its different modes of opera- 
tion are to be fully understood. Joint improve- 
ment is only one of the possible forms of transfer; 
reciprocal interference is just as significant a type 
of transfer as is joint improvement. 

"The experiment was carried a step further. 
After practice with No. 5, a new practice series 
was instituted with another line, which we may 
designate as No. 2. It was found that the person 
being tested was now very much less affected by 
practice with No. 2 than he had been during the 
first practice series with No. 5. The amount of 
practice given with No. 2 was much greater in 
quantity and more radical in type, but the reactor 
remained relatively unaffected. This means, of 
course, that when the reactor first came to the ex- 
periment he was open to all kinds of suggestions. 
He was in the habit- forming attitude; he easily 
took on the effects of practice. But after the 
training which he received with the line No. 5, he 
was less capable of acquiring new adjustments; 



84 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

he was no longer in the habit-forming attitude. 

"This is a third phase of transfer of practice. 
It is no less significant than joint improvement or 
reciprocal interference, for surely any influence 
which renders an observer immune to the effects 
of new practice is not to be overlooked in dis- 
cussing the relations of various forms of experi- 
ence to each other. The closing up of possibili- 
ties of future practice is much more important a 
consequence of any practice series than the direct 
transfer of effects to other functions." x 

10. Of the few experiments on the transfer of 
the effects of memory practice, two are described 
here in detail. But mention should be made in 
passing of the well-known experiments by James 
"to see whether a certain amount of daily training 
in learning poetry by heart will shorten the time it 
takes to learn an entirely different kind of 
poetry." James and four others tested them- 
selves as to the time required to learn by heart 
parts of selected poems. Then, for varying 
periods of time, they practiced memorizing parts 
of other poems. No statement is made of the 
amount of improvement in this practice series. 
Then the experimenters returned to the first poems 

1 Judd, Educational Review, June, 1908, "The Relation of Special 
Training to General Intelligence," pp. 28-30. See other experiments 
outlined in same article and the general conclusions drawn from them. 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 85 

— the test series — to test the improvement trans- 
ferred by or from the practice series. The re- 
sults showed very little improvement in the test 
series; and James concluded that whatever im- 
provement there was consisted "in the improve- 
ment of one's habitual methods of recording 
facts." 1 

Mention should also be made of the experi- 
ments by Ebert and Meumann on the transfer 
of acquired ability in memorizing nonsense 
syllables, both after one and after two months of 
practice, to ability in memorizing other nonsense 
syllables, stanzas, prose sentences, numbers, let- 
ters, visual signs, etc. The considerable amount 
of transfer noticed in these experiments was prob- 
ably due to the similarity of the material used in 
the different test and practice series, and to the 
development of better methods of memorizing, 
and, as Dearborn 2 suggests, to "direct practice in 
the test series, and not to any 'spread' of improve- 
ment from the practice series proper." The au- 
thors suggest, however, that there must have been 
some general ability developed by this specific 
training. 3 

1 James, Principles of Psychology, 1890, Vol. L, pp. 666, 667. 

2 Dearborn, Psychological Bulletin, February, 1908, "The General 
Effects of Special Practice in Memory." 

8 Ebert and Meumann, Archiv fur die Gesamte Psychologie, IV. 
Band, 1. u. 2. Heft, 1904, pp. 1-232. 



86 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

The following experiments were conducted by 
Winch with London school girls: — 

I. "The first series of experiments was made 
with girls of the average age of 13 years. The 
first step was to divide the children into two 
groups of equal ability as to memory. This was 
done, partly on an actual test and partly on the 
opinion of the class teacher. The test set was a 
passage from a historical reading-book, which 
was not in the ordinary way accessible to children 
of this class. Ten minutes were allowed for 
memorizing; the work was mainly visual, articu- 
lation, however, being permitted, provided that 
it was not audible. The girls were then required 
to reproduce in writing as much as they could 
remember, fifteen minutes being allowed for this. 
One mark was allowed for each word rightly re- 
membered and correctly placed. There were 
ninety-eight words in the exercise. 

"With the aid of the teacher, the girls were 
now placed in two equal groups. The members 
of the A group, during the next week or two, were 
practised in learning poetry, the B group mean- 
while working sums. With this exception, the 
school work of the two sections was the same 
during the progress of the experiment. After 
four practice exercises had been worked by group 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 87 

A, the two groups were placed together and a 
final test given in history. The time allowed for 
each test and exercise and the method of marking 
were the same in all cases. The general result 
may be more clearly indicated by the following 
summary, showing the pupils arranged in sections 
according to the marks they obtained in the pre- 
liminary test in history and giving the average 
marks of the different sections in both the pre- 
liminary and the final history tests. 







GROUP A 

A 




GROUP B 

A 


Marks in 

Preliminary 

Test 


No. of 
Chil- 
dren 


Pre- 
liminary 
Test 


Final 
Test 


No. of 
Chil- 
dren 


Pre- 
liminary 
Test 


Final 
Test 


Full marks 


3 


98.O 


133-0 


2 


98.O 


13 1.0 


95-98 


5 


96.4 


I3O.6 


7 


96.O 


121. 1 


90-95 


4 


9i-5 


123.2 


3 


91.0 


in. 6 


80-90 


2 


82.0 


II3-5 


2 


85.O 


92.0 


Below 80 


3 


63.6 


94-3 


3 


62.0 


87.0 



II. "A second series of experiments was 
made in another school, with girls of the average 
age of 13 years 3 months. The whole class, as 
in the previous school, was divided into two 
approximately equal groups, and one was prac- 
tised in memory exercises, and the other not. The 
preliminary and final tests were, however, exer- 
cises in geography instead of history as in the 



88 



MENTAL DISCIPLINE 



former school; and the poetical extracts given 
were simpler in meaning. Group B was occupied 
in writing whilst Group A was memorizing. The 
time allowed for memorizing and the method of 
marking were as before. 



GROUP A 



GROUP B 



Marks in 

Preliminary 

Test 

90 and over 
85-90 

75-85 
Below 75 



No. of 
Chil- 
dren 

3 
6 

5 
3 



Pre- 
liminary 
Test 

90-3 

88.0 
80.0 
71.6 



Final 
Test 

98.6 

92.0 

94.6 

8l.O 



No. of 
Chil- 
dren 

3 
6 

5 
3 



Pre- 
liminary 
Test 

90-3 

88.2 
80.4 
71.0 



Final 
Test 

95.O 

93-i 

85.2 

61.6 



III. "A third series of experiments was car- 
ried out in the third school, with girls of the aver- 
age age of 12 years 8 months. The general 
scheme of tests and exercises resembled that of 
the two previous experiments, history passages 
being used for the preliminary and the final tests. 



GROUP A 



GROUP B 



Marks in 

Preliminary 

Test 

98-IO8 
68-98 
48-68 
O-48 



No. of 
Chil- 
dren 

7 

8 
8 
4 



Pre- 
liminary 
Test 

103.8 
84.5 
58.3 
28.5 



Final 
Test 

IO4.6 

77-3 
64.0 

64.7I 



No. of 
Chil- 
dren 

7 

8 

7 
5 



Pre- 
liminary 
Test 

102.6 

82.5 
58.8 
27.4 



Final 
Test 

100.6 

64.3 
46.7 
4I.6 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 89 

"The conclusion from these three series of 
experiments seems definite and clear. Improve- 
ment, gained by practice in memorizing one sub- 
ject of instruction, is transferred to memory work 
in other subjects whose nature is certainly diverse 
from that in which the improvement was gained. 

"This, at least, is true as far as children of 
these ages and attainments are concerned. I ex- 
pressly add this limitation as to age, for infer- 
ences from adult psychology to child psychology 
and to pedagogical practice are extremely unsafe, 
and I am anxious to avoid the opposite error." x 

11. Fracker's experiments "on the transference 
of training in memory" are even wider in scope 
than those by Winch or by Ebert and Meumann. 
Only a brief account of them can be given here, in 
sentences selected from different parts of Fracker's 
monograph, with the essentials of the author's con- 
clusions. 

"The experiments given before and after train- 
ing may be called the test series, and the other set, 
the training series. The test series is made up of 
several experiments, some of which are like the 
training series, while others differ. The object of 
these two sets of experiments is to discover what 
effect practice in the training set has upon the test 

1 Winch, British Journal of Psychology, January, 1908, "The Trans- 
fer of Improvement in Memory in School Children." 



9 o MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

set in which the observer is not trained. This 
effect is measured by the difference in the results 
between the test series given before the training, 
and the test series given after the training. In 
order to measure the amount of training in the 
test series itself, two sets of observers are used: 
one set who take both the test and training experi- 
ments and another set who take the test experi- 
ments only. The difference in the gain between 
those trained and those untrained indicates the 
influence of the training experiments. The ob- 
servers composing these two sets are selected on 
the basis of similarity in age and ability. 

"The training series consisted in practice in 
memory for the order of four tones. The test 
series consisted of eight experiments, as follows: 
memory for poetry, for the order of four shades 
of gray, for the order of nine tones, for the order 
of nine shades of gray, for the order of four tones, 
for the order of nine geometrical figures, for the 
order of nine numbers, for the extent of arm move- 
ment. 

"Each observer was asked to write a careful in- 
trospection at the close of each day's training, after 
each experiment of the test series, and a general 
introspection at the close of the experiments giving 
his observations and conclusions concerning the 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 91 

essential elements in improvement and transference. 
At the beginning of each test, observers were given 
written instructions describing just what they 
were expected to do in response to the stimuli, but 
conveying no information as to how to do it. Re- 
sults in both the test and the training series are 
estimated on the basis of the per cent, of correct 
responses." 

Eight observers took both the tests and the 
training experiments, and four took the test ex- 
periments only. All observers had had some 
training in psychology. The first group of ob- 
servers made an average of 21 per cent, in the 
training series and the following gains in the test 
experiments: four grays 36, nine tones 22, nine 
grays 19, four tones 10, geometrical figures 13, 
nine numbers 4, movement o, poetry 7. The 
second group of observers (untrained) made the 
following average gains in the test experiments: 
four grays 4, nine tones 11, nine grays 10, four 
tones — 2 (loss), geometrical figures 8, nine num- 
bers o, movement — 1 (loss), poetry 2. The 
difference between the gain of the two* groups, 
which "indicates the influence of the training ex- 
periments," was as follows: four grays 32, nine 
tones 10, nine grays 9, four tones 12, geometrical 
figures 5, nine numbers 4, movement 1, poetry 5. 



92 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

"Three significant features are noted in the 
above table; first, the difference between the im- 
provement of the trained over the untrained; sec- 
ond, the difference in the improvement in the tests 
similar to the training series in trained observers 
over their improvement in tests dissimilar; and 
third, the greater amount of improvement in the 
tests than in the training." 

"The central or most essential element in im- 
provement and transference is individual imagery. 
Improvement seems to depend upon the consistent 
use of some form of imagery, whether it is the 
most advantageous form or not. Imagery may be 
sub-consciously developed, but if it comes to be con- 
sciously recognized, the improvement is more 
rapid. The rate of improvement seems to depend 
directly upon the conscious recognition of the im- 
agery, and upon attention to its use. A change of 
imagery during practice increases the rapidity of 
the improvement if a better form is adopted and 
adhered to. It may prevent improvement if a 
change of imagery is frequent, or if a less ade- 
quate form is adopted. Individual differences are 
clearly shown in different types of imagery by the 
rapidity with which the imagery develops, and by 
the clearness or definiteness of the imagery. The 
habit of guessing interferes with the formation of 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 93 

imagery and, therefore, results in lack of improve- 
ment." 

"When the acts are made up of quite different 
elements, there is a distinct breaking up of the 
habit of responding, by the intrusion of different 
elements, which raises the whole act into active 
consciousness so that the transfer of elements from 
one act to another act, other than the identical 
ones, is a conscious transference. It seems, there- 
fore, that a conscious effort to use the elements of 
training in a different task assists in making the 
transfer." "If, in the mind of the observer, the 
imagery is capable of adjustment to different tasks, 
it can be used in both improvement and transfer- 
ence, for the elements of the training act are 
thereby made the same as those of the test act." 1 

12. The following experiment was conducted 
at the Speyer School, Teachers College, with six- 
teen children of about eleven years old. The pur- 
pose was to test the effect of acquired ability to 
discriminate between shades of blue upon the abil- 
ity to discriminate between shades of red, of yel- 
low and green, and black and orange. The great 
transfer of ability shown by the experiment was 
probably proportionate to the similarity between 

1 Fracker, Psychological Review Monographs, 1908, Vol. IX., No. 38, 
University of Iowa Studies in Psychology, No. 5, "On the Transfer- 
ence of Training in Memory." 



94 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

the test with blue and those with the other colors. 
The amount of error was calculated according to 
the grade of difference between the two shades 
used in each experiment, which the children failed 
to recognize. The results are given in averages, 
before and after the training with shades of blue. 1 



Tests with red and white. 



Boys. 


Before 


4-5 4-5 3-0 


3-2 




After 


.6 .7 .9 




Girls. 


Before 


3-5 6.6 4-2 


3-4 




After 


.48 .75 ,6s 






Tests 


with yellow and green. 




Boys. 


Before 


6.7 5.3 4.0 






After 


2.0 2.0 1.3 


3-o 


Girls. 


Before 


5.0 5.2 5.0 


5-1 




After 


2.8 2.6 1.7 


i-7 




Tests with black and orange. 




Boys. 


Before 


3.0 2.8 3.4 






After 


1.2 1.6 .8 


•9 


Girls. 


Before 


2.7 2.7 2.2 






After 


1.8 1.3 .9 


•5 



2.3 
2.4 



2.1 



I.O 



•5 1 

1 Bennett, Formal Discipline, 1907, Columbia University. See other 
experiments reported in this thesis. 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 95 

13. The following experiment was conducted 
by Coover and Angell : 

"Four reagents were trained in discrimination 
of intensities of sound for 17 days during an in- 
terval of 57. Each reagent made 40 judgments 
in each day's training. 

"Before and after training the reagents were 
tested in the discrimination of shades of gray, 
each test consisting of three series, each containing 
35 judgments, delivered on 3 separate days. 



"All the test reagents with one exception show 
a gain in Right and loss in Undecided judgments 

after training The per cent, of gain for 

the 4 test reagents was 4, 4, 6, 6, o, o, and 27, 5, 
making an average of 9, 1 

"Improvement seems to consist of divesting the 
essential process of the unessential factors, free- 
ing judgments from illusions, to which the un- 
necessary and often fantastic imagery gives rise, 
and of obtaining a uniform state of attention 
which is less than a maximum 

"Our conclusion from the experiment, there- 
fore, is that efficiency of sensible discrimination 
acquired by training with sound stimuli has been 
transferred to the efficiency of discriminating 
brightness stimuli, and that the factors in this 



96 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

transfer are due in great part to habituation and 
to a more economic adaptation of attention, i. e., 
are general rather than specific in character." x 

14. The following experiments were con- 
ducted by the Dartmouth Pedagogical Depart- 
ment, under the direction of Lewis : 

"First, two test papers were prepared, one con- 
taining originals in geometry and the other ques- 
tions in practical reasoning." The papers are 
given in the article from which these extracts are 
taken. Three questions were given in each paper. 
The second paper dealt with the value of high 
school education to the individual and to the com- 
munity. "These tests were submitted to twenty- 
four different groups of high-school pupils. The 
students of each group belonged to the same class 
and were on an equality with respect to mathe- 
matical preparation. Each group took both tests. 
The results of these tests were carefully corrected 
and the pupils of each group arranged in two 
series, the first according to their ranking in math- 
ematical and the second according to their rank- 
ing in practical reasoning. 

"If we take the first five mathematical reasoners 

1 Coover and Angell (F.), American Journal of Psychology, July, 
1907, "General Practice Effect of Special Exercise." See also the de- 
scription of their inconclusive experiment on card-sorting and type- 
writer reactions. 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 97 

from each of the twenty-four groups, we have in 
all one hundred and twenty pupils most excellent 
in mathematical reasoning. Of this number 
seventy-six, or 63 per cent., are at the foot of the 
practical reasoning series, conspicuous for their 
inefficiency in practical reasoning. Of the num- 
ber of pupils at the foot of the mathematical rea- 
soning series, fifty-seven, or 47 per cent., are con- 
spicuous for their positions at the head of the prac- 
tical reasoning series. 

a As a supplementary test, and one precisely the 
same in principle, one man examined the records 
of Dartmouth students who had taken mathe- 
matics and certain law courses which required a 
good deal of reasoning. The records for ten 
different classes were examined, and tables were 
formed as in the previous test. 

"The results of this test were found to be 
strikingly parallel to those of the earlier test. 
Fifty per cent, of the best students in law were 
conspicuous for their poor showing in mathemat- 
ics ; and 42 per cent, of those poorest in law stood 
at the head of the series in mathematics." * 

15. The value of the Dartmouth conclusions 

1 Lewis, School Review, April, 1905, "A Study in Formal Discipline," 
pp. 289-291. For criticism of these conclusions, with some indefinite 
studies of correlation between ability in mathematics and ability in 
other subjects, see Collins, School Review, October, 1906, p. 607. 



9 8 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

has been challenged by Rietz and Shade, as the 
result of a recent statistical investigation made by 
them at the University of Illinois. The reader 
is referred to their pamphlet for explanation of 
their methods. 1 Coefficients of correlation were 
computed for the grades of several hundred stu- 
dents in mathematics, foreign languages, and ele- 
mentary science (chemistry, botany, and geology). 
The conclusions of this investigation are stated 
in the following coefficients of correlation, with 
their probable errors : for mathematics and foreign 
languages, r=o.^6— 0.015 or +0.015; for 
mathematics and natural science, r=o.440 — 0.015 
or +0.015. "Two characters are said to be cor- 
related if to a selected series of sizes of the one, 
there correspond sizes of the other whose mean 
values are functions of the selected values." 
"The probable error in any result may be defined 
as that deviation from the determined value, on 
either side, such that it is an even wager that the 
true value lies within this amount of the deter- 
mined value." Although the coefficients of cor- 
relation are surprisingly small, the authors claim 
to be "justified in saying that efficiency in mathe- 
matics and efficiency in foreign languages go to- 

1 Rietz and Shade, Correlation of Efficiency in Mathematics and Effi- 
ciency in Other Subjects, 1908, University of Illinois. 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 99 

gether in general to a high degree, and that to 
substantially the same extent do efficiency in math- 
ematics and in natural sciences go together." 

As this investigation is typical of others, it de- 
serves further discussion. Even if the above co- 
efficients of correlation were considerably greater 
than they are, we do not believe that they would 
give strength to the doctrine of formal discipline 
(as the authors would have us believe), because 
they do not prove that the ability derived from 
the study of mathematics is transferred to and 
thereby increases the abilities derived from the 
study of foreign languages or natural science, or 
vice versa. The way to prove the transfer of ac- 
quired ability from one subject to another is (1) 
to measure the ability in each subject at the begin- 
ning of the test, (2) to concentrate on increasing 
the ability in one of the subjects, and then (3) to 
measure again the ability in the other subject to 
see if there has been any increase following the in- 
crease made in the subject concentrated upon. 
The investigations by Rietz and Shade do not 
meet any of these requirements. In the first place, 
there is no test, comparative or otherwise, of in- 
crease of ability in the given subjects. It must 
also be remembered that most, though not all, of 
the courses were taken simultaneously, not sue- 



ioo MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

cessively. In the second place, there is not the 
slightest proof that the marks in the different sub- 
jects had any relation of cause or effect to each 
other. A student might have received exactly the 
same marks in two subjects without there having 
been any relation of cause or effect between them. 
In the third place, the pamphlet states that there 
had been secondary school training in the different 
subjects or in allied subjects. This specific prep- 
aration in each of the subjects, based upon the na- 
tive ability or lack of ability of the student, was 
sufficient to account for the correlation of the 
marks in the given subjects, without any transfer 
of ability from one to the other. But if there 
really were any transfer, it could easily be ex- 
plained by the common elements of the given 
subjects. We conclude, therefore, that this inves- 
tigation and others like it may invalidate the ex- 
tremes of the Dartmouth results but that they 
have little or no value as a support to the doc- 
trine of formal discipline. 

Similar investigations on the correlation of abili- 
ties furnish proof against the doctrine of formal 
discipline by showing greater differences between 
abilities, even between those that seem very much 
alike, than the doctrine would lead us to expect. 
"For instance, the correlation in adults between 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 101 

( i ) memory for figures and ( 2 ) memory for un- 
related words (memory being used to mean the 
power to keep a list in mind, after once hearing it, 
long enough to write it down) is not over .8; the 
correlation of pupils in the highest grammar grades 
between ( 1 ) quickness in thinking of the opposites 
of words and of the letters preceding given letters 
of the alphabet and (2) quickness in thinking of 
the sums of figures is not over .7. Yet the first 
pair of tests would commonly be used indiscrim- 
inately as tests of 'memory,' and the second pair 
as tests of 'association,' upon the supposition that 
the two members of each pair were practically iden- 
tical traits. Even so apparently trivial a difference 
as that between drawing a line to equal a 100 mm. 
line and drawing a line to equal a 50 mm. line 
causes a reduction from perfect correlation. The 
resemblance is, for 37 young women students, 
only .77." 1 

Although a small amount of correlation neces- 
sarily shows that there has been little transfer of 
ability, even a large amount of correlation does 
not necessarily show that there has been great 
transfer of ability. In the latter case, proof must 

1 Thorndike, Educational Psychology, 1910 Ed., Chap. IX., "The 
Relations between the Amounts of Different Traits in the Same Indi- 
vidual." For further studies and references on the subject of cor- 
relation, see Whipple, Manual of Mental and Physical Tests, 1910, 
"Correlation" in Index. 



102 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

be shown that the increased correlation is due to 
this transfer and not to native ability or to ac- 
quired ability in both subjects. The burden of 
proof rests upon those who have a positive cor- 
relation to explain, but a negative correlation is 
sufficient proof in itself of the absence of trans- 
ferred ability. "Finding correlation between 
two functions need not mean that improve- 
ment in one has brought about increased efficiency 
in the other. But the absence of correlation does 
mean the opposite." (Thorndike and Wood- 
worth. ) 1 

On the basis of some studies in correlation be- 
tween accuracy of London school children in 
numerical computation and accuracy in arith- 
metical reasoning, Winch comes to the following 
conclusion: "It seems to be possible to find 
highly correlated functions which appear to have 
very little relationship with pedagogical value. 
We cannot conclude, without further inquiry on 
other lines, that two highly correlated mental 
powers are causally related. If they have a com- 
mon factor or a common cause, it may be one 
which our methods cannot influence, and its de- 
termination has then little value for practical di- 

1 Thorndike and Woodworth, Psychological Review, May, 1901, "The 
Influence of Improvement in One Mental Function Upon the Efficiency 
of Other Functions," p. 248. 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 103 

rection, except in a negative sense. Two quanti- 
ties may be highly correlated but their ratios of 
growth may not be; nor may we be able to pro- 
duce increase in the one by producing increase in 
the other. I understand that these empirical con- 
clusions are quite in accord with correlational 
theory, but it is well to state them here, as it is 
quite possible that educationists will regard an 
established high correlation as justifying several 
inferences which do not properly flow from it." x 

16. The following experiments with school 
children were conducted by Norsworthy to test 
the amount of correlation between selected func- 
tions : 

"Tests were given in multiplication, in observ- 
ing misspelled words, in marking words con- 
taining e and r, in observing the word "boy" 
wherever it occurred, and in marking semi-circles 
scattered amongst all sorts of geometrical forms. 
Differences of the same individual had been 
measured in arithmetic, spelling, and in ability to 
mark certain forms. One of them was taken as 
a standard and the other tests correlated with it. 

"The conclusions reached from this study are 
in line with those already quoted, namely, that it 

1 Winch, Journal of Educational Psychology, December, 1910, "Ac- 
curacy in School Children. Does Improvement in Numerical Accuracy 
'Transfer'?" p. 587. 



io 4 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

seems probable that certain functions which are 
of importance in school work, such as quickness 
in arithmetic, accuracy in spelling, attention to 
forms, etc., are highly specialized and not second- 
ary results of some general function 

Accuracy in spelling is independent of accuracy in 
multiplication, and quickness in arithmetic is not 
found with quickness in marking misspelled 
words; ability to pick out the word boy on a 
printed page is no guarantee that the child will be 
able to pick out a geometrical form with as great 
ease and accuracy." x 

17. The following experiment was conducted 
by Stone to determine the arithmetical abili- 
ties of the sixth-grade pupils in twenty-six schools. 
The pupils were given under similar conditions 
the same problems in "fundamentals" (addi- 
tion, subtraction, multiplication, division) and 
in "reasoning" (practical application of the 
fundamental operations). The results showed 
marked variation of pupils in ( 1 ) ability 
in fundamentals as compared with ability in rea- 
soning and ( 2 ) ability in any one of the four fun- 
damentals as compared with any of the other 
three. These variations are shown by the coeffi- 

1 Norsworthy, New York Teachers' Monographs, December, 1902, 
"Formal Training," pp. 98, 99. 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 105 

cients of correlation between these abilities, The 
author concludes that "the net result of the arith- 
metic work of the first six years is several prod- 
ucts rather than a product. The study of arith- 
metic makes demands on a plurality of abilities. 
Hence it is inaccurate to speak of the arithmetical 
ability of pupils, and it is bad educational practice 
to treat the subject as though it were a unity in- 
stead of a plurality." * As the author suggests, 
such a conclusion antagonizes the doctrine of 
formal discipline because it disproves the com- 
plete transfer of abilities from one phase of the 
same study to another. Even within the limits 
of the same study there are variations in abilities, 
according to the nature of the different activities 
involved in the study; even within the limits of the 
same study there is a decrease in the transfer of 
abilities, proportionate to the difference in the ac- 
tivities involved in the study. 

18. The following experiments were conducted 
under the supervision of Winch in three London 
municipal schools for girls and one school for 
boys. The purpose of the experiments was to 
seek an answer to the question, "Does improve- 
ment in accuracy of numerical computation 'trans- 
fer' to arithmetical reasoning?" 

1 Stone, Arithmetical Abilities, 1908, Teachers College, p. 43. 



106 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

"The general method adopted was the same 
throughout, though there were minor modifica- 
tions as to the number and difficulty of the exer- 
cises in different schools. In each case a whole 
class, working according to the same syllabus of 
work and under one teacher, was divided into two 
equal groups. The division was effected on the 
results of several tests in problematical arithmetic. 
In order that the natural ability of the children 
rather than their memory of recent teaching 
should be tested in these exercises, it was arranged 
that no problems should be given in a form with 
which the pupils were well acquainted. The 
tests were marked solely with reference to the 
accuracy of the arithmetical reasoning and entirely 
without reference to the accuracy of the numerical 
computation. No attention was paid to the right 
answers; marks were given with reference to the 
process only. 

"When the two equal groups had been ob- 
tained, one of them was practised in a series of 
exercises in 'rule' sums which every child knew 
how to do; the other group being meanwhile en- 
gaged in some other branch of school work. In 
every other respect the curriculum for both groups 
was precisely the same during the period of the 
experiment. I need, perhaps, hardly say that no 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 107 

other arithmetical work was done during the time 
the experiment lasted. 

"Finally the two groups, namely, the one prac- 
tised in accurate numerical computation and the 
one not so practised, were placed together again, 
and final tests were given in arithmetical reason- 
ing. There had been, in all cases, a considerable 
improvement in the accuracy of numerical com- 
putation during the series of practice exercises. 
How far was this improvement of accuracy in 
arithmetical computation transferred to accuracy 
in arithmetical reasoning? Did the practised or 
non-practised groups do better work when the 
groups worked the same test exercises at the end?" 

"The following tables summarize the results for 
the four schools: 









School "S" 










Marks in 

Preliminary 

Exercises 


NON-PRACTISED GROUP A 


PRACTISED GROUP B 




No. of 
Chil- 
dren 


Av. Mark 
per Child 

in Pre- 
liminary 
Exercises 


Av.Mark 

Final 
Exercise 


i 

No. of 
Chil- 
dren 


Av. Mark 
Per Child 
in Pre- 
liminary 
Exercises 


Av. 
Mark 
Final 
Exer- 
cise 


30 


and over 1 


33-o 


15.0 


I 


32.0 


l6.0 


25 


to 30 


5 


27.4 


I4.6 


4 


28.7 


^S 


20 


to 25 


2 


20.5 


7-5 


3 


22.0 


7.0 


15 


to 20 


4 


18.0 


9.2 


4 


18.O 


9.2 


10 


to 15 


4 


14.2 


6.0 


4 


I4.O 


4.2 



108 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

School "B" 

NON-PRACTISED GROUP A PRACTISED GROUP B 



Marks in 

Preliminary 

Exercises 


1 

No. of 
Chil- 
dren 


Av. Mark 
Per Child 
in Pre- 
liminary 
Exercises 


Av. Mark 

Final 
Exercise 


No. of 
Chil- 
dren 


Av. Mark 
Per Child 
in Pre- 
liminary 
Exercises 


Av. 
Mark 
Final 
Exer- 
cise 


Over 35 


2 


37.0 


33-5 


2 


36.O 


35-o 


35 to 30 


2 


32.5 


32.0 


3 


32.7 


32.7 


30 to 25 


5 


29.O 


28.8 


4 


28.7 


28.0 


25 to 20 


3 


24.O 


23-3 


4 


22.5 


27.7 


20 to 15 


5 


18.6 


18.8 


4 


i7-5 


16.0 


15 to 5 


5 


9.0 


12.2 


5 


9-8 


15-4 






School "I" 








19 


4 


6.3 


7-5 


5 


6.3 


7-1 


18, 17, 16 


7 


5 .6 


6.4 


6 


5-S 


7-7 


i5> 14, i3i 














12, n 


4 


4-5 


4.8 


5 


4-3 


5-2 


6, 5> 4 


4 


i-9 
School 


1.2 

"o. k; 


3 
> 


1.6 


1.6 


35 to 40 


4 


37-8 


38.3 


4 


37-8 


38.8 


30 to 35 


3 


34.o 


38.7 


3 


34.o 


37-o 


25 to 30 


6 


28.0 


28.2 


5 


28.0 


32.8 


20 to 25 


4 


22.8 


23.8 


5 


22.6 


28.6 


15 to 20 


8 


17.8 


19.5 


8 


17-5 


20.3 


10 to 15 


5 


13.2 


18.8 


4 


12.0 


13.8 



5 to 10 5 8.4 8.6 4 7.8 13.3 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 109 

"It seems possible to improve the accuracy of 
numerical computation without any certainty that 
we shall thereby improve the accuracy of arith- 
metical reasoning. 

"For the present, therefore, pending more con- 
clusive experiments, numerical accuracy should be 
sought for because it is valuable in actual life, and 
not because we can feel confident that an improve- 
ment in it will transfer to accuracy of arithmetical 
reasoning. 

"But if improvement in accuracy of numerical 
computation is not transferred, how shall we ac- 
count for the general trend of the final results in 
reasoning (in all schools except "S") in favor of 
the practised groups? 

"There seem to me two possibilities. I have 
judged the children's reasoning powers in arith- 
metic by problems numerically worked out, though 
the accuracy or inaccuracy of the numerical so- 
lution has not affected the mark for reasoning. 
Might not the greater facility in numerical compu- 
tation, such as was obtained by most of the prac- 
tised groups, set free, as it were, more mental 
energy to deal with the rational solution of the 
problems? 

"Also, since, in school, the functions of numerical 
computation and of arithmetical reasoning are 



no MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

often exercised together, the continuance of nu- 
merical computation by one of the groups and its 
discontinuance by the other might well maintain 
in one case a greater readiness for the associated 
operations than in the other, and the former would 
on that account do better work in arithmetical rea- 
soning than the latter. 

"But if either of these hypotheses were true, 
ought we not to expect more regular results; 
though not perhaps such regular results as if there 
were a direct transfer of accuracy?" * 

19. Ruger has made some valuable confirma- 
tions of the theory of specific disciplines and of the 
possibilities of transfer through "ideals of 
method" in his "experimental study of the proc- 
esses involved in the solution of mechanical puzzles 
and in the acquisition of skill in their manipula- 
tion." As these experiments bear so closely upon 
our problem, considerable space must be given to 
them in our summary. 

"Mechanical puzzles were chosen as the material 
to be employed. The term mechanical is used to 
indicate that all the puzzles involved actual manip- 
ulation of the materials. No trick puzzles were 
used, i. e. } all the puzzles were possible of solution 

1 Winch, Journal of Educational Psychology, December, 1910, "Ac- 
curacy in School Children. Does Improvement in Numerical Accuracy 
'Transfer'?" 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS in 

and all the physical materials required were sup- 
plied to the subject. The puzzles might be roughly 
classified into analytical and synthetical, and, 
again, into tridimensional and bidimensional. 
Most of the puzzles were analytical and tridimen- 
sional. They were for the most part made of 
wire, and involved the removing of some part of 
the apparatus, such as a ring, star or heart, from 
the rest. Some of the puzzles were of the syn- 
thetic or construction type, such as the familiar jig- 
saw puzzles or rarer forms involving three dimen- 
sions. The movements required for solution were, 
in general, rather complex. In certain cases the 
degree of complexity could be indefinitely in- 
creased, and yet a single rule be developed for so- 
lution in the various resulting forms." 

"The method of conducting the experiments was 
very simple. The subject was seated comfortably 
at a table, on which the puzzle was placed. The 
puzzle was covered by a screen. After the warning 
signal a starting signal was given, and the screen 
removed. When the manipulation for the given 
trial had been completed, the puzzle was immedi- 
ately removed by the operator and prepared for 
the following trial. The subject was given no 
opportunity to examine the puzzle except during 
the actual trial. The number of trials for a given 



ii2 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

subject for a given puzzle varied from i to 1,440. 
The standard number was 50. Fifty-one series 
were taken in which the number of trials compos- 
ing the series equaled or exceeded 50. The num- 
ber of trials at a given sitting varied with the sub- 
ject and the puzzle. The sittings were usually 
of an hour and a half in length. In some cases 
an entire series of 50 trials was completed in this 
interval. In others several periods were consumed 
in gaining the first solution." 

"All except five of the subjects had done work 
in psychology and had some special interest in it. 

Five of the subjects were women 

There were, altogether, twenty-seven subjects. 
Nine of them completed long series on at least six 
puzzles each. The remainder were given fewer 
puzzles and shorter series." 

The experiments and discussion on transfer are 
given here at length. The author says that "the 
term, transfer, is used rather broadly to include 
both the specific and general effects of a given ex- 
perience on succeeding experiences. 

"a. Specific Motor Habits. — (1) A given 
subject was tested with a puzzle thrown in chance 
positions. He was then trained to approximately 
the physiological limit in handling four special but 
important positions. He developed no general 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 113 

rule to include his treatment of these special posi- 
tions. He was then retested with the puzzle in 
chance positions. Another subject was trained en- 
tirely with chance positions, in a series approxi- 
mately half the length of the first subject's series. 
The second tests of the first subject showed no im- 
provement over the initial results and were inferior 
to those of the second subject. This failure to 
profit by the highly specialized training seems to 
have been due to the lack of a generalized rule of 
procedure. As it was, each chance position was 
first reduced to one of the four special positions 
and then the solution was proceeded with instead 
of being performed directly. 

"(2) A certain puzzle was so arranged that it 
could be presented in various forms. The manipu- 
lations for these various forms could all be com- 
prised under a single formula. This general for- 
mula could be deduced from any one of these 
special forms. A number of subjects were tried 
with this puzzle. As soon as skill was acquired 
in dealing with one form of the puzzle it was 
changed to another form. The subjects who de- 
veloped the general formula during the solution 
of the first form were able to use the specialized 
habits built up in the first form in the second. 
Those who formed merely the special habits with- 



ii4 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

out developing the principle, attempted to carry- 
over the habits without modification and were 
greatly embarrassed by the change. 

"(3) A subject was tested with a puzzle in a 
given form. Then all the motor habits neces- 
sary for the rapid solution of this form were built 
up by practice on the separate acts of manipulation 
involved. The elements were organically related 
in the successive forms of the practice series, so that 
the practice was not on the separate elements 
merely but on their connections. At the close of 
the practice series the subject was given the com- 
plete form, which was identical with that of the 
initial test. This form was not recognized as be- 
ing related to the practice series, and the habits 
built up there were not brought into use. 

"In general, the value of specific habits under 
a change of conditions depended directly on the 
presence of a general idea which zvould serve for 
their control. 

"b. Concrete Imagery. The mere presence of 
imagery, although vivid and of closely related puz- 
zles, was no guarantee of its efficiency. Very 
often attention rested on some superficial point of 
similarity and progress toward solution seemed to- 
be delayed instead of hastened. The value of the 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 115 

image as well as of the motor habit depended on 
the precision of the analysis. 

"c. Attitudes and Attention. As has been pre- 
viously stated, the first success often brought a 
complete change of attitude toward the puzzles. 
This transfer or extension of mood seemed at times 
to be almost reflexly accomplished, so direct did it 
appear. A change in the subject's idea of himself, 
from that of one incapable of solving such a prob- 
lem to one capable of doing so, probably played a 
part in the change of mood. A similar but less 
decided change of mood was at times accomplished, 
in the absence of success, by the suggestion that the 
subject was doing as well as others. An attitude 
of self-confidence was at times self-induced through 
an idea of its value, and subjects were able by this 
means to avoid a state of confusion when in diffi- 
culty, to which state they had previously fallen 
victims. 

"No evidence was secured in favor of an auto- 
matic change in level of attention, but there were 
indications of its indirect control by means of 
ideals of what constituted an efficient state of 
attention. 

"d. Ideals of Method. The great significance 
of ideals of method has perhaps been sufficiently 



n6 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

emphasized. This significance was especially 
striking in proportion as the situation in question 
was distinctly novel. The idea of efficiency as a 
goal to be reached, the ideals of scientific method, 
and the deal of an optimum personal attitude were 
among the most important of these." 1 

20a. Scott experimented with a group of 
twenty students to test their comparative suggesti- 
bility as to color and as to heat. He found such 
differences between the tests that he was led to the 
following conclusion, for which his tests do not 
seem to give a sufficiently wide basis. 

"At all events the inference from a study of 
these two experiments (and others not here de- 
scribed) is that degrees of suggestibility as deter- 
mined from one test cannot be inferred as holding 
for suggestibility in general. Before individual 
A can be said to be more suggestible than individ- 
ual B they must have been subjected to many and 
diverse forms of tests. Otherwise different de- 
grees of suggestibility should be affirmed as pres- 
ent only for the particular form or forms as 
tested." 2 - 

b. Whipple made two sets of experiments to 
determine the "effect of practice upon the range 

1 Ruger, Psychology of Efficiency, 19 10, Archives of Psychology, 
No. 15. In Chap. VI, Ruger gives a detailed analysis of these experi- 
ments and a further explanation of the results. 

2 Scott, Psychological Review, March, 1910, "Personal Differences in 
Suggestibility." 



REVIEW OF EXPERIMENTS 117 

of visual attention and of visual apprehension." 
"In the first set of experiments (range of atten- 
tion), 5, 6 and 7-place series of isolated letters were 
exposed for 0.08 sec. with a tachistoscope. The 

observers were six college students In the 

second set of experiments (range of apprehen- 
sion), groups of dots, pictures, drawings, non- 
sense syllables, and stanzas of poetry were ex- 
posed for 3 sec. with the tachistoscope, and 
collocations of 10 objects were exposed without 
instrumental aid for 6 sec. The observers were 
three adults." The author concludes that the ef- 
fect of the practice was specific in both sets of 
experiments. 1 

c. Foster made similar experiments to test the 
"effect of practice upon visualizing and upon the 
reproduction of visual impressions." "Real ob- 
jects, pictures, and nonsense-drawings were shown 
to three observers for moderate times (10 to 60 
sec). Exact reproduction by drawing, sometimes 
supplemented by written description, was then re- 
quired." The observers were advanced students of 
psychology. The author concludes that his "re- 
sults show that the ability gained is very specific." 2 < 

1 Whipple, Journal of Educational Psychology, May, 1910, "The Ef- 
fect of Practice Upon the Range of "Visual Attention and of Visual 
Apprehension." 

1 Foster, Journal of Educational Psychology, January, 1911, "The Ef- 
fect of Practice Upon Visualizing and Upon the Reproduction of 
Visual Impressions." 



CHAPTER IV 
OBSERVATIONS 

The following observations are those which 
seem to us to militate most strongly against the 
doctrine of formal discipline. Though based 
upon general experience rather than upon labora- 
tory experiments, we believe that these observa- 
tions are strengthened by the results of the 
experiments on transfer. 

i. The training of one part of the body re- 
sults in a specialized development of that part, 
rather than of other parts or of the body as a 
whole, except in so far as a generally increased 
circulation and metabolism increase the vigor of 
the whole organism. The way to train a particu- 
lar muscle or organ is through the proper exer- 
cise of that muscle or organ rather than of others. 
In so far as related muscles or organs are involved 
in the same training exercises, they will also be 
trained by these exercises. But muscles or organs 
cannot be trained unless they or the nerve centres 
controlling them have in whole or part under- 

118 



OBSERVATIONS 119 

gone exercise and training. Each one of us is 
more capable in those parts of the body that have 
been better trained in the course of our lives. And 
even these parts act better for some special pur- 
poses than for others, because they have been 
trained to act in these specific ways. 

2. The training of the mind in regard to one 
subject results in a specialized ability to deal with 
this subject, rather than with other subjects. In 
so far as other subjects are similar in matter or 
in method to the first subject, the mental ability 
to deal with this first subject can be used with the 
other subjects. But ability to deal with any sub- 
ject cannot be developed unless the mind has been 
exercised directly with it or indirectly on account of 
some of its elements being included in the other 
subjects with which the mind has been directly ex- 
ercised. Furthermore, from the standpoint of 
psychophysics, mental exercise in connection with 
any part of the brain will tend to increase the cir- 
culation and metabolism in the brain as a whole, 
just as physical exercise in any part of the body 
will tend to increase the circulation and metabol- 
ism in the body as a whole; but this generally in- 
creased vitality is far different from the specialized 
ability acquired through specific training. 

3. Most of us recognize that we are special- 



120 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

ized in our mental abilities, showing more accu- 
racy, concentration, reasoning, endurance, etc. in 
dealing with those matters with which we have 
had most to do. We know from experience that 
we cannot transfer these abilities to other matters 
without loss. We think better about some par- 
ticular things than others, we feel more keenly 
about some particular things than others, we do 
more easily some particular things than others. 
In many cases it is easy for us to trace out those 
past experiences that have produced these special- 
ized abilities; and on the other hand we can jus- 
tify our lack of ability in other lines by showing 
how little opportunity we have had to develop 
these other specialized abilities. We are more or 
less a bundle of specific abilities and of specific 
inabilities, doomed to our efficiencies and our in- 
efficiencies by the activities which have made out 
of our native tendencies whatever we are to-day. 

4. We also notice in those about us a similar 
particularization of ability to lines of activity 
which have become habitual. W T e notice this most 
strikingly in the narrow abilities of many special- 
ists (doctor, merchant, housekeeper, etc.), who 
appear at an increasing disadvantage the further 
they digress into fields dissimilar to their own. 

5. The business and professional world relies 



OBSERVATIONS 121 

more and more on the superiority of specialized 
ability resulting from special training. Men are 
thereby becoming more efficient specialized work- 
ers but less adaptable, less transferable, more 
dependent upon the specialized demand for their 
work. Thus is being produced an economic de- 
pendence which is almost fatalistic. The way to 
overcome this fatalism of specialization is not by 
claiming the transfer of acquired ability, a dogma 
that the employer and the public will not accept 
as a wise business principle. Either the ability of 
the specialist must be related in matter or in 
method to other abilities (and this is not often 
the case at present) , or the specialist must be 
trained in the broader activities, if not in the de- 
tails, of two or more specialties. This is one of 
the arguments for manual training courses as 
preparation for industrial work of any kind. It 
is no exaggeration to say that the necessities of 
economic competition have shown the fallacy of 
the doctrine of formal discipline. 

6. The ability displayed by some people in 
two or more lines of activity may be due to their 
having been specially trained in these lines and not 
to a transfer of acquired ability from one activity 
to another. Or the activities may be so closely 
related that ability in one is in part ability in the 



122 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

other. Or these several abilities may be due to 
the general native ability of the person, resulting 
from the innate structure and vitality of the brain. 
There is often a failure to distinguish in thought 
between native ability, which is either general or 
special, and acquired ability, which is special. 
The former is due to the superior nature of the 
brain, in whole or in part; the latter is due to the 
action of stimuli upon a specific part of the brain, 
according to the nature of the stimuli as well as 
of the brain. No one doubts that some people 
have unusual native capacity for receiving and 
holding impressions, for sustaining close atten- 
tion, for making clear judgments, for exercising 
vigorous and precise muscular control, etc. A 
person may thus be talented in one or in several 
lines. His initial superiorities will render more 
efficient and rapid his development in one line of 
activity or in several; but, in the latter case, the 
development in a subsequent line of activity is not 
due to a previous development in a different line 
of activity, but to a singular native superiority of 
intra- or inter-cellular organization or metabolism 
in the different parts of the brain connected with 
the different lines of activity. The ability of 
school pupils in several studies is often used to 
support the belief in the transfer of acquired 



OBSERVATIONS 123 

ability from one subject to different subjects, 
whereas no such explanation seems needed or 
justifiable in these cases. 

7. Furthermore, the ability of pupils in one 
study after they have acquired ability in another 
study may be due to general growth processes at 
that period of physical and mental development, 
regardless of particular studies and acquired abili- 
ties. The different stages in the growth of a child 
represent the birth of new tendencies, interests, 
and abilities, which greatly affect his school work. 
This is often seen in high-school pupils, whose 
general adolescent development of secondary sex 
characters and of the association centres of the 
brain will largely account for their increased ability 
in successive studies of different kinds. These 
factors of constitutional growth are generally over- 
looked, not only in the curricula and methods used 
at different stages of growth, but also in our ex- 
planations of the progress made in school work 
at these different stages. 

8. The variations shown by the same pupils 
in their class standing in different studies are 
puzzling to the formal disciplinists. These varia- 
tions may be due to differences in application, in 
native ability, or in acquired ability for this or 
that particular work. In so far as they are due 



124 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

to acquired ability, the doctrine of transference 
does not seem to hold, for the abilities acquired 
in one study do not spread uniformly to other 
studies. The greater amount of uniformity often 
noticed in the class standing in related studies 
seems to show that in so far as studies are simi- 
lar there tends to be a similar ranking of the 
pupils in these studies. 

9. But what is more serious is the generally 
recognized fact that pupils who excel in school are 
often beaten in professional or business life by 
fellow-pupils who ranked below them in class 
standing. The school abilities acquired through 
school activities are not in these cases carried over 
to the environmental activities outside the school. 
This is due to the difference between the matter 
and the method of the two activities and to the 
consequent inability of the pupils to make success 
in the one issue into success in the other. If there 
were such a transfer of acquired ability as the 
doctrine of formal discipline implies, there would 
not be such a difference in the ranking of individ- 
uals in the two activities. 

10. Closely related to a recognition of this 
fact is the popular demand for more "practical" 
courses in the schools. This demand is based 
upon a belief, not only that the kind of training 



OBSERVATIONS 125 

derived from these courses is different from that 
derived from others, but that this kind of train- 
ing is the one needed for practical efficiency, be- 
cause it is derived from materials and methods 
similar to those used in practical life. The doc- 
trine of democracy in education and the doctrine 
of formal discipline cannot be well harmonized. 
When only the favored few "took" education, the 
doctrine could be cherished as a cultural ideal and 
the waste involved In its application could be over- 
looked or tolerated without economic hardship. 
But when the masses of limited means determined 
to educate their children, they questioned some 
of the school's circuitous methods of promoting 
mental development and exerted their power to 
eliminate indirect and wasteful ineffectiveness in 
preparing boys and girls as soon as possible for 
independent service. This is one of the reasons 
why the doctrine of formal discipline is retiring 
from the elementary schools and is showing signs 
of increasing discomfort in the secondary schools, 
as the latter become democratic in sympathy and 
usefulness as they have become democratic in sup- 
port and control. 

11. Finally, we notice that adherents of the 
doctrine of formal discipline shrink from carry- 
ing their doctrine to its logical conclusions, namely, 



126 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

the exact equivalents of studies for mental disci- 
pline or, if a distinction is made between them, 
the concentration on a single superior study 
for the training of a given power or set of powers. 
In practice, if not in theory, these adherents ac- 
knowledge a variation in training of a given 
power or set of powers as related to a vari- 
ation in content of study. A case in point is the 
inconsistency of the Committee of Ten on 
Secondary School Studies in stating what seems 
to be a belief in the equivalence of studies and 
then specifying elaborately varied curricula, repre- 
senting different phases of the environment, dif- 
ferent subject-matter and method. Baker dis- 
sents from the doctrine of equivalence in his mi- 
nority report. Schurman seconds him in a maga- 
zine review, declaring that "the Committee of 
Ten, and some of the conferences as well, have 
fallen victim to that popular psychology which de- 
fines education merely as the training of the 
mental faculties." * Taylor, a member of the 
Committee, replies in an article of defence that 
the word "equivalence" was used "in relation to 
college requirement. The thought of the com- 
mittee was surely equivalence of results, in this 
aspect, rather than equivalence of value, intrin- 

1 Schurman, School Review, February, 1894, p. 93- 



OBSERVATIONS 127 

sically considered." J This is not exactly the point 
at issue. Are studies equivalent for mental dis- 
cipline, even though we recognize their difference 
"of value, intrinsically considered"? The prac- 
tical influence of the Committee's report has been 
to strengthen the current belief in this disciplinary 
equivalence, though the Committee's real intention 
is better shown by its suggestive curricula. 

1 Taylor, School Review, April, 1894, P- 196. 



CHAPTER V 

LOCALIZATION OF FUNCTION 

A strong theoretical objection to the doctrine of 
formal discipline is implied in the generally ac- 
cepted theories of localization of function to spe- 
cial areas of the cerebral cortex (visual, auditory, 
motor, association, etc.), of the division of the 
motor area into sub-areas (leg, hand, face, etc.), 
and of the division of the sub-areas into very small 
areas representing movements (opening of eyes, 
closing of eyes, opening of mouth, protrusion of 
tongue, etc.). It seems reasonable to draw from 
these theories the hypothesis, which seems to us 
consistent with the results of the experiments on 
transfer, that for every specific function there is 
a concomitant stimulus of specific parts of the 
cerebral cortex and their specific connections with 
other parts of the central nervous system. Of 
course, it is recognized that neural activity is not 
absolutely limited to these parts in concomitance 
with a specific function; but it is held that neural 

128 



LOCALIZATION OF FUNCTION 129 

activity centers in these parts in concomitance with 
the specific function. It would follow then that, as 
every stimulus modifies the specific parts in such a 
way as to make the succeeding stimulations of 
them easier (the law of habit formation), a suc- 
cession of similar functions synchronizes with a 
succession of stimulations of specific parts of the 
central nervous system, which so modify these 
parts as to produce the physiological counterpart 
of a specific acquired ability. If, in the course of 
time, the acquired ability becomes so great as to re- 
quire little or no conscious control in its function- 
ing and to approach the automatism of a habit, its 
specific limitations become more and more decided, 
because the habit becomes more and more difficult 
to modify in other directions. Acquired abilities 
and habits are specific on account of their bases 
in localized and specific modifications of the central 
nervous system. As was previously suggested in 
discussing the experiments upon cross-education, ac- 
tivities which are in part controlled through differ- 
ent centres in the cerebral cortex may also be in 
part controlled by the same centres in the other 
parts of the central nervous system. The only 
way to get the benefit of previous training is 
through a use of the modified parts, all or some, 
in former associations or in new associations. 



130 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

The extent of the benefit derived is proportionate 
to the number of these parts used and to the ex- 
tent of the previous modification of them. How- 
ever, if effort is made to use these previously 
modified parts in different ways in different as- 
sociations, the tendency of the stimulation of 
these parts to issue into activity in the previous 
way and association may interfere with the latter 
activity. This interference will be proportionate 
to the difference and the comparative strength of 
the two associations. 1 

The doctrine of formal discipline, on the other 
hand, seems to imply that the modifications pro- 
duced by successive similar stimulations and ac- 
tivities are not localized in specific parts of the cen- 
tral nervous system but are distributed to many 
different parts and can be used in connection with 
entirely different activities. Or, the doctrine 
might imply that these modifications are localized 
in specific parts of the. central nervous system but 
that these parts with their modifications can be 
used again with entirely different activities. Both 
of these implications seem untenable. 

Mental discipline results from such a modifica- 

1 See Bergstrom, American Journal of Psychology, June, 1894. "The 
Relation of the Interference to the Practice Effect of an Association"; 
for different opinions, see Henderson, Text-Book in the Principles of 
Education, 19 10, pp. 306-8, and our quotations from Judd and Bair. 



LOCALIZATION OF FUNCTION 131 

tion of specific parts of the central nervous system 
as will render future action along specific lines 
easier and more efficient. The aim of education 
is the control and direction of activity in the pur- 
suit of certain ideal ends, and this aim is partly 
realized through discipline in the control and di- 
rection of activity toward these ends. In other 
words, the individual is educated through such re- 
sponses to specific stimuli as will modify the spe- 
cific parts of the central nervous system that he 
will use in adjustment to his environment. These 
modified parts represent the subject-matter of ac- 
tivity, the content in regard to which the activity 
has been controlled and directed, or the method of 
activity, the form in which the activity has been 
controlled and directed. Though these parts can 
be used again in new associations of subject-matter 
or of method and the benefit of the previous mod- 
ifications can thus be transferred to a partially new 
activity in so far as it makes use of these parts, 
there is a probability that such new associations and 
new uses of these modified cells will not be made 
unless the associations are worked out or suggested 
by or for the individual. The parts of the central 
nervous system representing subject-matter may 
not be the same as those representing method in 
regard to this subject-matter, but the close associa- 



132 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

tion formed by practice between the two makes it 
difficult to use the one without the other. They 
tend to form a closed circuit. Therefore, it is 
necessary in education to break or enlarge this cir- 
cuit by using in whole or in part the same subject- 
matter in association with different methods, and 
by using in whole or in part the same methods in 
association with different subject-matter. And 
even when several associations have thus been 
worked out or suggested, there is a tendency for 
the older or stronger associations to assert them- 
selves and interfere with the newer or weaker as- 
sociations, especially if the latter are radically 
different from the former. Consequently, effort 
should be made to develop as the strongest associa- 
tions between specific subject-matter and specific 
method those that are of the most environmental 
value. The wide transferability of many specific 
disciplines can thus be proved a reality in educa- 
tional practice comparable in extent and value with 
the unrealized claims for formal discipline. 

Experiments have shown that children and 
adolescents break up old associations and form 
new ones more easily than do adults. Therefore 
they show more quickly and to a greater extent the 
transfer of the effects of practice from one associa- 
tion to another. The common elements in the two 



LOCALIZATION OF FUNCTION 133 

functions are more readily usable in both. This 
is due to the greater plasticity of the nervous sys- 
tem of children, to their limited experience, and 
consequently to the smaller degree of fixity and 
strength of the earlier associations. This fact is 
of great importance in the education of the young, 
because childhood and youth are the golden pe- 
riods for associating and using the elements, mod- 
ified by special training, in the various functions 
in which the transfer of the effects of practice will 
be of great value. 

Most modifications of the doctrine of formal 
discipline are based upon some theory of localiza- 
tion. But Thorndike is the only author who car- 
ries this theory to its extreme conclusion: "There 
seems to be no> structural arrangement by which 
the changes wrought by practice in one set of 
nerve cells could infect other cells with a similar 
quality." "By identical elements [in two func- 
tions] are meant mental processes which have the 
same cell action in the brain as their physical cor- 
relate." 1 O'Shea gives in one sentence a similar 
but more cautious reason for modifying the for- 
malist doctrine: "We should infer from current 
theory respecting the methods of neural action, 
that exercise of any special kind would furrow out 

1 Thorndike, Educational Psychology, 1903 Ed., pp. 30, 81. 



i 3 4 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

channels for the discharge of energy in support of 
just this kind of activity, but not an activity of a 
different sort." 1 Wardlaw has expressed the 
same idea in a striking analogy: "If I have broken 
a path through the weeds, I can cross that 
field more easily thereafter. This fact does not 
mean that the muscles of my legs are bigger than 
before, but simply that I am using the same path 
again — not that I have more strength to work 
with, but that there remains less work to do. And 
so, with the mind, there is a great difference be- 
tween increasing a general power and increasing 
facility by using acquirements already made." 2 
Bolton has recently discussed the problem more 
fully: "The theory of the localization of function 
and all the facts supporting it are arguments 
against the theory of formal discipline. Special 
localized areas and special functions could never 
have been developed had not the effects of exercise 
been cumulative at certain points rather than 
evenly diffused. Nourishment was supplied to 
the particular parts in excess of that supplied to 
any other parts. Consequently growth and devel- 
opment followed in the particular directions 

If the doctrine of general powers were true, it 

1 O'Shea, Dynamic Factors in Education, 1906, p. 75. 

2 Wardlaw, Educational Review, January, 1908, "Is Mental Train- 
ing a Myth?" p. 28. 



LOCALIZATION OF FUNCTION 135 

would be inconceivable that localization and special- 
ization should ever have taken place. Any organ 
ought, according to that theory, to be able to con- 
trol any function, and an undifferentiated, homog- 
enous structure would have served equally as 
well as the exceedingly complex, specialized brain 
which we possess. With the gradual isolating, in- 
sulating, and specializing of functions, however, 
efficiency has arisen." 1 On the other hand, Colvin 
warns against the arguments for extreme localiza- 
tion: "The faculty psychology assumed a number 
of fabulous entities which worked out the des- 
tinies of the individual, while the doctrine of abso- 
lute localization of nervous function has made the 
brain a machine of relatively unrelated parts and 
has created a doctrine of psychic atomism which is 
as untrue as it is impossible of practical applica- 
tion. " In a second edition of his monograph, Col- 
vin adds this further criticism: "If we try to 
overthrow the doctrine of transfer on the ground 
of absolute localization of nervous functions, we 
are doing so on dubious theoretical grounds and 
holding to a theory which runs counter to what 
we know of mental elements and mental organiza- 
tion. If, on the other hand, we accept the doc- 

1 Bolton, Principles of Education, 1910, Chap. XXVIL, "General Dis- 
cipline and Educational Values," pp. 753, 754. See also, Henderson, 
Text-Book in the Principles of Education, 1910, p. 43. 



136 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

trine of relative rather than absolute localization, 
of colligation of remote functional areas, and of 
vicarious functioning (as does Wundt), we find 
that such an hypothesis, instead of making against 
the possibility of transfer, gives a clear basis and 
reason for such transfer. Indeed, a rational 
hypothesis of cerebral localization suggests co- 
operation and transfer of the widest possible 
sort." * And finally, Ruger even goes so far as 
to say that "the definition of identical elements in 
terms of common cell action in the brain is of value 
only as a demand for explanation." 2 

1 Colvin, Some Facts in Partial Justification of the So-Called Dogma 
of Formal Discipline, 1909 and 191 o, University of Illinois, pp. 6, 
23. See also, reviews (listed in Index) of our first edition by Bagley, 
Cousinet, and Dearborn. 

2 Ruger, Psychology of Efficiency, 1910, Archives of Psychology, No. 
15, P- 85. 



CHAPTER VI 

GENERAL CONCEPTS OF METHOD 

If acquired abilities are specific, not general, does 
it follow that there are no general results from spe- 
cific mental discipline? The experiments on trans- 
fer suggest not only the transferability of the ef- 
fects of practice from one function to others which 
are similar in greater or less degree, but also the 
transferability of the effects of practice from one 
function to others which have little recognizable 
similarity in their specific subject-matter or their 
specific method. Is it not possible to be consis- 
tent with the results of these experiments and with 
our previous emphasis upon the specific character 
of training and still grant that there is a general 
benefit to be gained from this training over and 
above the possibilities of wide transferability, not 
the general benefit claimed by the formal dis- 
ciplinists but one of great value in mental develop- 
ment? If so, how can such a general benefit be 

137 



138 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

gained? The quotations in chapter II by Thorn- 
dike, Bolton, Colvin, and Rowe and those by 
Ruediger and Henderson at the end of this chapter 
are suggestive answers to this question. We add 
here a quotation from Bagley, which has had great 
influence in directing thought to this phase of the 
problem. 

"The doctrine of formal discipline assumed 
that the mastery of a certain subject gave one an 
increased power to master other subjects. It is 
clear that there is a certain amount of truth in this 
statement, provided that we understand very 
clearly that this increased power must always take 
the form of an ideal that will function as judg- 
ment and not of an unconscious predisposition that 
will function as habit. In other words, unless the 
ideal has been developed consciously, there can he 
no certainty that the power will he increased, no 
matter how intrinsically well the subject may have 

been mastered An ideal ; is a type of 

condensed experience. It is the upshot of a mul- 
titude of reactions and adjustments, both individ- 
ual and racial. Because it is a type of condensed 
experience, it is commonly formulated as a propo- 
sition or conceptual judgment. Or it may be 
attached to a single word The devel- 
opment of an ideal is both an emotional and an 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 139 

intellectual process, but the emotional element is 
by far the more important" (Bagley.) 1 

While agreeing in the main with the points of 
view expressed by these authors, we prefer to state 
the matter thus: A general benefit can be derived 
from specific training in so far as the person 
trained has consciously wrought out, in connec- 
tion with the specific training, a general concept of 
method, based upon the specific methods used in 
that training. The building of such a concept fol- 
lows the same laws as does the building of other 
concepts. The common elements in a number of 
specific methods arc abstracted and bound to- 
gether in a general concept of method, a general 
rule or principle of how to do, how to act, in 
situations of a certain general type. These con- 
cepts may be held in the mind in one or more 
sentences, in a single phrase or a single word, in 
a metaphor or a line of poetry or some traditional 
maxim, in a formula of mathematics or chemistry 
or engineering. In all cases the symbol stands 
for a method of activity, be it in the realms of 
pure or applied natural science, of social science 
or practical civics, of business or professional life, 
of personal manner or social relations. The mind 

1 Bagley, Educative Process, 1905, Chap. XIII., "Formal versus In- 
trinsic Values of Experience: The Doctrine of Formal Discipline," pp. 
216, 222, 223. 



i 4 o MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

stores up by means of this symbol the rules and 
directions to guide its activity in adjustment to 
those phases of the environment to which such 
an activity seems applicable. 

It is necessary at this point to emphasize three 
important distinctions. The first is the distinction 
between what to do and horn to do it. The former 
is subject-matter, the latter is method. The 
ideals of the what and the ideals of the how ought 
not to be confused in thought, though they may 
be closely related. 

The second important distinction to be em- 
phasized is that between a widely transferable 
acquired ability in the use of some specific method 
and a generalized acquired ability in the use of 
several methods. The former is the result 
of activity in dealing with a concrete situation in 
a specific way and can be transferred to another 
situation only in so far as the method used is 
common to both. No matter in how many situa- 
tions a given specific ability may thus be used, it 
still remains specific; it never becomes generalized 
and usable in situations which do not have ele- 
ments of method in common with it.. As has been 
suggested before in this essay, there is frequent 
confusion at this point, especially because some 
specific methods have elements in common with a 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 141 

large number of other methods and therefore the 
abilities developed by the use of the former are 
widely transferable. But this transferability is 
far different from general mental discipline, from 
generalized abilities, powers, habits. 

The third important distinction is that between 
a widely transferable acquired ability and a gen- 
eral concept of method. The one is power and 
efficiency to perform specific activities; the other 
is an intellectual proposition or judgment as to 
how activities of a certain general type should be 
performed. The one is ability to do ; the other is 
knowledge of how to do. These are often spoken 
of as one and the same thing, but a little reflection 
will make evident the great difference between 
them. To know how to do, how to apply one- 
self, how to reason, how to control one's desires, 
is part of the victory, but it is only the initial part. 
It guides us in developing an ability, it eliminates 
much of the trial and error otherwise necessary, 
it focuses attention upon the required steps, it 
short-circuits the process; but it does not bestow 
ability. Ability can be developed through the 
application of the general concept of method to 
a specific situation, but it is only by specific activity 
and neural modification that we can acquire an 
ability. We may know how to be good, reason- 



142 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

able, efficient, but we do not actually become good, 
reasonable, efficient until we have practised, in 
specific situations, these virtues and incarnated 
them in specific deeds. It is the doing that makes 
us what we are. In fact, our knowledge of how 
to do, our concept of method, is really never com- 
plete until we have thus applied and tested it in 
specific deeds. 

Can the formation of such a general concept of 
method from specific methods be explained on the 
afore-mentioned hypothesis of localization of 
function to specific parts of the central nervous sys- 
tem? The conscious formulation of the concept 
into words or sentences synchronizes with stimula- 
tions and consequent modifications of specific parts 
of a word or a concept centre of the cortex. Only 
in some such way does it seem possible for the con- 
cept to be registered in the brain. The modifica- 
tions in these specific parts cannot, of course, be 
generalized, but they can be made generally usable 
through their associations with different parts of 
the cortex and the central nervous system, con- 
nected with different specific activities. These 
specific activities include those which, through 
their common elements, formed the original basis 
of the concept and also those which, through their 
common elements, will be subsequently guided by 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 143 

the concept. A general concept of method is, 
therefore, a centre, a clearing-house, connecting 
the previously used specific methods of a certain 
general type with the subsequently used specific 
methods of that type. This does not mean that 
the parts of the central nervous system used and 
modified in a previous activity need be used again 
in a subsequent activity, unless it is necessary to 
vitalize the central concept guiding the second ac- 
tivity by reference to the concrete basis upon which 
the concept was built. As the general concept of 
method can be used for guidance in several activ- 
ities, it can be considered a common, transferable 
element in them all ; but this common element, this 
connecting link, is one of knowledge of how to do, 
not of ability to do. It can be a central guide 
even when the activities and the abilities derived 
from these activities are different and non-trans- 
ferable. 

We repeat that it is through general concepts of 
method, not through general discipline, that spe- 
cific methods and training can be made generally 
beneficial over and above their use in functions in 
which they form an essential part. The more nu- 
merous and varied the specific methods from 
which the common elements have been consciously 
abstracted, the more widely applicable is the gen- 



i 4 4 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

eral concept of method for the person who formed 
it. Of course, all these specific methods need not 
be worked out or observed at the time when the 
concept is formed. The specific methods used at 
the time may be limited in number and variety, but 
subsequent experience may add other methods and 
thus extend the applicability of the concept. Fur- 
thermore, all of these methods need not at one 
time or other be worked out or observed in the 
concrete; some of them can be imagined from a 
knowledge of other situations to which similiar 
methods would apply. The essential thing in 
forming a general concept of method, with vital 
meaning and wide applicability, is to work out, 
or (in a less degree) to observe others work out, 
the specific methods from which the general con- 
cept can be formed. Then, after comprehending 
the value of the method in dealing with the spe- 
cific situation or situations, the pupil should work 
out, or, if that is not possible at the time, he 
should think out, its application to other situa- 
tions. Upon such a wide basis in reality he should 
consciously build and hold his general concept of 
how to deal with these and other possible similar 
situations, applying and enlarging it as later ex- 
perience gives him opportunity for so doing. 
General concepts of method can be formed 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 145 

without as systematic or elaborate a process as is 
here suggested. Many are derived by pupils from 
their school work without any realization of the 
steps taken. However, some such process is nec- 
essary, and upon its care and thoroughness depend 
the validity and extension of the general concept. 
Furthermore, ability to use the specific methods 
from which the concept is derived is not a neces- 
sary basis for the formation of the concept; only 
an understanding of the specific methods, only a 
knowledge of how to act in the specific situations, 
is essential. This understanding of methods is 
often gained at school without ability to use them, 
and, on the other hand, ability is often gained in 
the use of methods without an understanding of 
them. But an understanding of specific methods 
is never complete without ability to use them, and 
ability to use them is never complete without an 
understanding of them. Therefore, it is well to 
urge a careful, systematic procedure both in spe- 
cific training and in the formation of general con- 
cepts of method. 

What are the steps by which a teacher can 
lead his pupils to develop a general concept of 
method. First, he can lead them to recall and 
explain the methods previously used, which are 
similar to those to be worked out. Second, he 



146 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

can lead them to work out and understand the 
specific methods used in connection with the sub- 
ject-matter that is presented. Third, he can lead 
them to analyze and compare these specific meth- 
ods in order to abstract their common elements. 
Fourth, he can lead them to bind together these 
common elements into a general concept of 
method. Fifth, he can lead them to apply, con- 
cretely or imaginatively, the concept thus formed 
to other subject-matter. Here we have the u five 
formal steps" used in developing a general con- 
cept of method, just as they should be used in 
developing other general concepts. Of course, 
these steps are only suggestive, not binding as 
some books would have us believe; but they do 
outline the successive stages in the mental process 
of forming concepts. With allowance for all the 
variations necessary under special circumstances, 
it must still be reiterated that these steps are a 
good guide for any teacher who strives to make his 
pupils derive general benefit from their specific 
activities and training. 

Concepts of methods should be associated with 
sufficient emotional valuation and impulsion to 
make them effective in practice. But all voluntary 
acts need to be directly or indirectly motived by 
the emotions; the necessity is general and needs 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 147 

no special emphasis here. The stress put by Bag- 
ley upon "the emotional element as by far the 
more important" in his "ideals" shows that he is 
thinking especially of those concepts of method 
for the application of which great emotional motiv- 
ation is needed, as, for example, the general con- 
cept of how to be courteous to those we dislike or 
of how to deny ourselves in social service. But 
there are a large number of concepts of method 
for the application of which little emotional motiv- 
ation is needed, as, for example, the general con- 
cept of how to test the logical steps in an argument 
or of how to sift source material. Furthermore, 
emotions generally centre around the object in 
view, the subject-matter, rather than the method; 
it is what we should do, not how we should do it, 
that is usually the centre of our emotional strug- 
gles. But the general concepts to be derived from 
specific training are those of method, over and 
above subject-matter. Of course, the method can 
be made an end of action, not a means, and we 
may like it or dislike it; but it has then been mis- 
placed and misvalued. Its real value is to guide 
in the doing of what we have decided to do, after 
such motivation and choice as the situation de- 
mands. 1 

1 Bagley says in reply, Journal of Educational Psychology, January, 



148 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

In this connection it is interesting to compare 
a few discussions of the elements of method, or 
form, in mental discipline. In addition, reference 
should be made to some of the discussions and 
experiments previously outlined, which emphasize 
either the transfer of ability acquired in the use 
of certain elements of method or the formation of 
general guiding principles of how to memorize, 
how to pay attention, how to pick out the essentials 
in a test, etc. Some of the authors fail to make 
one or more of the three distinctions which we 
have pointed out as necessary for clearness in dis- 
cussing the elements of method. 

"For the empirical science of logic the term 
form, as applied to our intellectual processes, in- 
dicates a common element, or series of common 
elements, in those processes, which makes the 
theory of formal discipline at least intelligible 

1 910: "The concepts of scientific method, for example, can be more 
readily transferred from the high-school laboratory to the situations 
of later life if the pupil has a strongly emotionalized belief that the 
scientific method is really 'worth while.' Merely recognizing from the 
point of view of intellect that the scientific method involves un- 
prejudiced observation and careful induction is one thing; feeling the 
worth of this method as the best known means of attaining truth is 
quite another." We have never doubted the value of emotional mo- 
tivation in getting people to apply the principles they have; but we 
claim that the problem of giving emotional color to the formation and 
application of concepts of method is part of the general problem of 
emotional motivation in all instruction that looks to its outcome in 
action, as all instruction should. We argue against there being any 
unique emotional need here. 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 149 

and apparently tenable as a doctrine of intellec- 
tual training. In other words, formal training is 
discipline in certain discoverable forms of intel- 
lectual activity." "Formal discipline is the prac- 
tice of the mind in certain forms or methods of 
thinking which are 'common elements' in wide 
ranges of experience." "The one word which 
sums up the theory of formal discipline is method, 
or, rather, methods. It is the theory that the 
mind can be trained to do well certain kinds of 
work, to follow successfully certain methods of 
procedure." "For the carrying on of any pur- 
suit, we need not only talent, native or acquired, 
but also information, interest, practice, before the 
work can be successfully done. Exercise in one 
function should not be expected, therefore, to give 
equal facility in the carrying on of another. 
Obviously it does not, and the degree of the diffi- 
culty of transfer is determined, not only by 
identity or difference in the formal elements, but 
also by differences and similarities in the contents 
as well. That such a position is in accordance 
with the results of investigation thus far will not, 
I think, be denied." (Meiklejohn.) * 

"What are these formal elements? I am 

1 Meiklejohn, Educational Review, February, 1909, "Is Mental Train- 
ing a Myth?" pp. 132, 134, 136, 138. 



150 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

tempted to call them laws — the laws of nature, 
the laws of composition and succession of mental 
states, the laws of human intercourse and of 
human advantage." In any discussion of formal 
discipline, the forms of human activity, not the 
forms of the outside environment, are to be dis- 
tinguished from content — the material with which 
or upon which the individual acts. Both the con- 
tent and the forms of the environment furnish the 
subject-matter elements in mental discipline; the 
forms of dealing with this environment furnish 
the method elements in mental discipline. We 
must distinguish between forms of the environ- 
ment, as we interpret them, and forms of human 
activity in relation to that environment. Later on, 
Delabarre makes this distinction and discusses 
those formal elements which we have preferred 
to call methods of activity. "There is still an- 
other class of what, I think, can with equal jus^ 
tice be called formal elements, to which I desire 
to direct your attention. These are the general 
forms, not of our apprehension of the world, but 
of our conduct toward its situations. We know 
them commonly as the fundamentally desirable 
moral qualities, the components of good char- 
acter. We can easily see that included among 
them are sympathy, kindliness, fearlessness, truth- 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 151 

fulness, justice, courage. These seem almost like 
the names of emotions. But they are more than 
that. They are desirable elementary forms of 
our attitude toward the world, our reactions upon 
it. Any one of them is a form, whose possession 
gives us good judgment in dealing with a wide 
variety of situations, and perhaps slow but finally 
firm acquirement of any one of them is of enorm- 
ously more importance to us than the learning of 
any number of specific facts," Here we have an 
emphasis, which we also noticed in Bagley's dis- 
cussion, only upon those methods of activity which 
require great emotional motivation for their ap- 
plication. "The formula of common elements is 
true, but of no practical value. Practically all 
mental processes have elements, formal or struc- 
tural, in common. Not only does good training 
in any subject improve methods of learning, of 
attention, of work, of comprehension; but it is 
also true that all knowledge possesses some ele- 
ments in common, and the number of these may 
be very considerable even in case of subjects that 
appear at first sight little related. The structural, 
technical, content-elements are very important, 
but they can be left more safely to individual need 
and individual endeavor. The formal elements 
are universal, or at least of wide application, and 



152 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

hence are more helpful and more difficult to ac- 
quire. To them education should surely give its 
best attention. No one can be a mere specialist. 
Everyone needs formal material for correctly 
judging a wide variety of experiences and rela- 
tions that are essential to life." (Delabarre.) 1 

The following quotation illustrates well a popu- 
lar confusion on the subject, a confusion even 
implied in the quotations from Meiklejohn and 
Delabarre. Raymont makes a distinction for 
mental discipline between the matter and the 
method of instruction, but he gives general dis- 
ciplinary value, general mental training, to the 
method, although denying it to the matter with 
which the method was used. He is really up- 
holding the doctrine of formal discipline in regard 
to elements of method. "Mental discipline de- 
pends, not so much upon the subjects taught, as 
upon the method of teaching. Bad science-teach- 
ing will not improve the reasoning powers, but 
will leave the learner still under the thumb of au- 
thority and prescription; whilst good science- 
teaching will avoid this evil, and will also 
exercise the imagination, by opening out won- 
derlands as glorious as those of literature. 

1 Delabarre, Education, May, 1909, "Formal Discipline and the Doc- 
trine of Common Elements," pp. 591, 593, 599. 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 153 

On the other hand, bad literary and historical in- 
struction will leave the imagination barren, whilst 
sound instruction in these branches will not only 
avoid this mistake, but will also furnish the means 
of abundant exercise in cautious judgment and 
valid inference." "Though the method of in- 
struction should be carefully devised with a view 
to mental discipline, it is misleading to say that 
the choice of the matter of instruction depends 
upon considerations of discipline." x 

"If we have analyzed the doctrine of for- 
mal discipline correctly, it is evident that its ex- 
treme advocates and its extreme opponents are 
both wrong. Knowledge and training are not 
merely specific in their application, but they also> 
have a general value. This value arises through 
the factor of identical elements, of which there are 
at least three types [aim, method, and content], 
and it declines rapidly as the similarity of the ma- 
terial of instruction or training decreases. Be- 
cause of this rapid decline we can conclude that 
this doctrine is valueless as a criterion for the se- 
lection of subject-matter. To depend or retain a 
subject on the basis of its disciplinary effect is to 
take a stand on an extremely slender support. 
Only intrinsic values serve as valid bases for such 

1 Raymont, Principles of Education, 1906 Ed., p. 100. 



i 5 4 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

retention and defense. But after a subject has 
once been admitted on this basis, the formal values 
that exist should be given their full emphasis. 
This means no more than to say that the subjects 
should be taught as well as we know how to teach 
them. No subject has a supreme or peculiar value 
in developing methods of procedure or ideals that 
are of universal application, but all subjects may 
be so taught as to yield their quota in these re- 
spects; and it is to be especially emphasized that 
we get little of these formal values without defi- 
nitely aiming for them. The general relations 
of aim, method, and content must be brought 
definitely and attractively to consciousness, and ap- 
plied to the activities at hand. Only in this way 
can we make sure that these values will to a certain 
extent be generalized; and they will in addition 
vitalize our teaching." 

In another chapter Ruediger discusses "the rela- 
tion of form and content values." "The thesis 
here maintained is that the formal values never 
take rank above the intrinsic values, but that, while 
they may be quite coordinate with them, they are 

usually subordinate to them In life, method 

is for the sake of content, for the sake of results, 

and not for the sake of the method itself 

Valuable though method is, it cannot stand alone. 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 155 

It is necessarily subordinate to content and cannot 
be taught except through content. This relation 
holds also in regard to the formal value that we 
have designated 'identity of aim.' Aims and 
ideals are relative to the concrete activities of life 
in school and in society, just as method is relative 

to content The transfer of mental function 

through identity of substance is not a gain through 
a formal value, strictly interpreted, but through 
a content value. This element accounts in part 
for the transfer of educational effect from one 
study to another, but the gain is received from the 
direct application of previously acquired knowl- 
edge." x 

This argument is of doubtful validity. If the 
specific elements of method are kept in mind as 
specific and are not generalized by their essentials 
into general concepts of method (see our previous 
discussion), then their general use would be lim- 
ited to the general use of the specific content 
with which they first developed, and their value 
might be considered coordinate with or even 
subordinate to, the content with which they were 
first associated. And any future specific transfer 
or application might be similarly valued in com- 

1 Ruediger, Principles of Education, igio, Chap. VI., "The Doc- 
trine of Formal Discipline," and Chap. IX., "The Elemental Educa- 
tional Values: Formal Values." 



156 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

parison with the specific content to which it were 
applied. But if specific elements of method are 
worked up into a general concept of method, the 
concept need not then be closely dependent upon 
the specific content with which its constituent ele- 
ments were respectively and formerly associated, 
and it could be applied to new content, which might 
or might not have little or any similarity to the 
former content. In other words, the generaliza- 
tion of the common essentials of specific elements 
of method into a general concept of method gives 
these elements far wider and greater influence than 
they otherwise would have; it thereby gives them 
far greater value than the content with which they 
were first associated. The number and variety of 
such general concepts of method that would be 
worked out in education are small as compared 
with the number and variety of the content used 
in school and of the content with which the con- 
cepts might be used in the future. The conse- 
quently larger range and applicability of these con- 
cepts make them of supreme value in education, 
especially in secondary schools and colleges. If 
Ruediger's second formal value, that of "aim," is 
considered apart from method, our same argument 
would apply for the superior value of general con- 
cepts of aim or purpose. 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 157 

The following quotation from Henderson is 
very valuable : 

"It is evident that formal elements are relational 
in character. When one speaks of classes of 
situations, he has in mind usually, if not invariably, 
groupings according to form, such groupings as are 
based on the relation of the situations to our prac- 
tical life. Neatness is a requirement of a form of 
situations, because it cannot be defined apart from 
the relation between its material and the persons 
who inspect or use it. Such relationships may be 
very general. Indeed, it is likely that they are 
far more general than are the content factors 
which they relate. The need of memorizing is 
more commonly encountered in experience than is 
any fact that one needs to memorize. It is diffi- 
cult to draw a hard and fast distinction between 
the relational and the related factors, the form 
and the content, of experience. However, it is 
evident that where emphasis is thrown on relation, 
there we have form, and that there are certain 
fundamental forms that constitute typical prob- 
lems, the power to deal with which is a constant 
asset throughout life. The acquisition of this 
power may properly be designated as formal dis- 
cipline. Thus we may speak of training to at- 
tend, by which we mean to assume the physiologi- 



158 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

cal or mental adjustments of attention, some of 
which are more and some less general, as being 
formal discipline in so far as it is independent of 
the content to which attention is given. More- 
over, as the adjustments become more and more 
adapted peculiarly to one content, the merely for- 
mal character of the discipline would seem to be 
lost If it seems natural and appropri- 
ate to designate one phase of a situation as its 
form, and another as its content, it must be remem- 
bered that the part of discipline in reference to 
each is the same; i.e., to establish associations and 
reactions which these factors, when they recur, 
may invariably suggest. Moreover, discipline in 
adjustments to a few type forms would not be of 
any value if it were not sustained by familiarity 
with the treatment of a multitude of facts. 

"But education, whether in form or in content, 
does not sum itself up in specific discipline, in the 
establishment of definite associations. It includes 
also general discipline, or the training of power 
to recognize the occasions for the use of habits or 

knowledge Habits, like any resources, 

are made available, not alone by being shaken 
aloose from dependence upon a narrow group of 
accidental associations, but also by the acquisition 
of a great and varied mass of connections, acci- 



CONCEPTS OF METHOD 159 

dental or essential, so that their recall in a new 
concrete situation may not depend on too tenuous 
a thread." * 

1 Henderson, Text-Book in the Principles of Education, 1910, Chap. 
X, "The Question of Formal Discipline," pp. 312-14. See also, our 
quotation from Henderson in Chap. II. 



CHAPTER VII 

A STANDARD OF EDUCATIONAL 
VALUES 

The doctrine of formal discipline, in its extreme 
form, implies that the mind is made up or pos- 
sessed of certain general powers or faculties — 
memory, imagination, reasoning, etc. These 
powers are developed by exercise to a degree pro- 
portionate to the force and duration of the exer- 
cise taken, but the stimulus which calls forth this 
exercise of any power affects but little the kind of 
exercise and consequently the kind of development 
of that power resulting from such exercise. This 
development in strength, breadth, accuracy, etc. of 
the power involved can be used in response to any 
other stimulus than the one by which the power 
was previously exercised, with little change in na- 
ture or diminution in amount. The different pow- 
ers are considered like different tanks or reservoirs 
with many pipes emptying into them and many 
draining out of them. No matter through what 
pipe water gets into the tank, it can go out by any 
other pipe and continue almost unchanged through 

1 60 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 161 

the entire process. The practical problem of men- 
tal discipline in education then resolves itself into 
(i) deciding what are the power tanks (memory, 
reasoning, etc.) to be filled by school education; 
(2) selecting the largest usable pipes to carry 
water into each tank; and (3) forcing water 
through these pipes into the tank until the supply 
is considered sufficient to meet any and all de- 
mands. When any given subject, say mathema- 
tics, is defended on this doctrine, the implication 
is that it is the largest usable pipe for carrying 
water into the tank of reasoning or accuracy or 
some other power, and therefore more of the 
desired power can be accumulated through this 
pipe than through any other. Or a given sub- 
ject may be defended because it consists of a 
number of pipes carrying water to several power 
tanks, reasoning, accuracy, attention, etc. 

Of course the doctrine of formal discipline is not 
held in this extreme form by many of its present ad- 
herents, but the above analogies represent roughly 
the traditional and logical conclusions of their po- 
sition. Whatever modifications and limitations 
these adherents make seem to us to be in the di- 
rection of an emphasis upon the specific nature of 
mental discipline. 

The doctrine of specific disciplines, on the other 



1 62 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

hand, claims that there are no such general pow- 
ers or faculties — memory, imagination, reasoning, 
etc., but that these names stand for vague classi- 
fications of mental responses to stimuli. The 
mind develops in a specific manner by practice 
in response to specific stimuli, and the bene- 
fit of this development can be fully used only 
in future similar responses to stimuli similar 
in whole or in part to those which called 
forth the previous responses. This benefit de- 
creases just in proportion to the amount of dis- 
similarity between the future and the previous 
stimuli. To refer to the afore-mentioned analogy 
(which, of course, is in no way exact), the oppo- 
sition holds that there can be no tanks or reser- 
voirs of general power, with many pipes emptying 
into them and many draining out of them. Each 
pipe collects, holds, and discharges the water flow- 
ing into it, though there may be many connections 
with other pipes. The practical problem is to 
choose pipes of the most specific value and then 
force water into them. Mathematics, for instance, 
would be defended on this doctrine because of its 
great specific value in developing ability to reason, 
to be accurate, etc. in regard to the mathematical 
elements in the environment. 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 163 

As the following standard of educational values 
is based upon the doctrine of specific disciplines, 
supported, we believe, by experimental evidence 
and general observation, its main emphasis is 
upon the specific or intrinsic value of each ele- 
ment of subject-matter or of method in the school 
curriculum. 1 This value is determined by the 
environmental importance of the element and con- 
sequently by the environmental usefulness of the 
specific ability developed by the element. As a 
specific element of subject-matter or of method 
may appear in various combinations in the en- 
vironment, the specific ability developed by it 
can be used with as many of these combina- 
tions as are recognized as containing the given 
element. The value of these elements is there- 
fore determined objectively and sociologically, 
but when brought into the school they should be 
so arranged and interpreted as to appeal to the 
pupil at successive stages of growth, and also to 

1 Colvin makes a valuable suggestion as to the possibilities of transfer 
"when the reaction is under the dominance of a mood or emotion that 
so colors the objective environment that several different stimuli may- 
call forth the habitual response." It seems to us that here we have 
common elements of emotional response in two or more functions and 
that these elements might well be considered one of the three common 
elements — subject-matter, method, and emotional response — which make 
transfer possible. The "aim" emphasized by Ruediger might be con- 
sidered a fourth common element, but we would prefer to include the 
element of aim as one of the elements of method. 



1 64 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

reveal to him their significance in the various com- 
binations in which they appear in the environ- 
ment. 

Out of the specific elements of method can be 
formed general concepts of method, but these 
concepts should be derived from methods of the 
most specific value in the environment. Thus can 
be realized two educational aims — training in the 
use of valuable specific methods, and the formation 
and application of valuable general concepts of 
method. To seek these aims separately, giving 
one study for its specific value and one for its 
general method value, is clearly a waste of the 
most precious asset of the school, namely, the 
child's energy. It may be that in one study one 
value will be emphasized and in another study the 
other value will be emphasized, but with few ex- 
ceptions the studies of the most specific value will 
be those of the most general method value. 
Therefore, it is certainly the wisest policy to base 
a criterion of studies upon the specific value of 
their elements of subject-matter and of method. 

The elements of studies that are common to 
the present or future environments of most of the 
pupils are the elements to be studied and tested 
in working out a school curriculum; the other 
elements are to be eliminated, no matter what 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 165 

traditional emphasis may have been given 
them. As even the important elements in the 
environment are far too many to be included in 
elementary and secondary curricula, also among 
them must there be a rigid and relentless selec- 
tion. Every included element must have proved 
its supremacy over the competing elements that 
might have taken its place if such a test were not 
carefully enforced. "The question which we 
contend is of such transcendent moment, is, not 
whether such or such knowledge is of worth, but 
what is its relative worth ?" ( Spencer. ) 1 In how 
many and in how important ways (quantity and 
quality of usefulness) can the specific element be 
used by the pupil in adjustment to his environ- 
ment? Here is our basis of comparison between 
elements, and there is no reason why each and 
every element of each and every study should 
not be subjected to such a comparison. To select 
the most valuable elements and organize them 
into a graded curriculum ought to be the chief 
purpose of school administration. "As the edu- 
cational aim is the unfolded and capable mind in 
the concrete social and natural situations of life, 
and as we are efficient in those situations in pro- 
portion as we have developed ourselves earlier in 

1 Spencer, Education, 1861 Ed., p. 28. 



1 66 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

similar situations, it follows that those subjects 
have the greatest educational value which have 
the greatest number of identical elements with 
the situations of life A new problem is pro- 
posed to educational theorists at this point, viz., 
to go through our subjects of study with a view 
to determining what and how many elements they 
have in common with life.'' (Home.) 1 

Of course, our standard is a utilitarian one. 2 It 
would be wasteful and wrong to have any other. 
But this standard is by no means that of a nar- 
row, materialistic utilitarianism; it simply stands 
for the test of usefulness to the whole person in 
relation to the whole environment, emphasizing 
especially those ethical, intellectual, and aesthetic 
ideals that minister to the best uses of the human 
spirit. A general development can be promoted 
by useful responses to important phases of the 
environment far better than by the hypothetical 
all-roundness of an arbitrarily chosen group of 
cultural or of formal disciplinary studies. It is 

1 Home, Education, May, 1909, "The Practical Influence of the New 
Views of Formal Discipline," p. 616. See also, Home, Psychological 
Principles of Education, 1906, Chap. VI., "The Theory of Formal Dis- 
cipline"; Tompkins, Philosophy of Teaching, 1891, p. 266. 

2 Cousinet, L'Educateur Moderne, April, 1910, p. 190: "II y a 
dans ces formules une tendance bien americaine a l'utilitarisme, M. 
H... le reconnait volontiers (p. 115), que je juge dangereuse et con- 
traire a une bonne discipline intellectuelle. Encore est-il juste de 
reconnaitre que M. H... echappe un peu a cette critique par l'im- 
portance qu'il donne a la methode." 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 167 

a sad commentary upon our educational abstract- 
ness that we often fail to realize the high and 
noble inclusiveness of the ideal of use in our 
preparation of boys and girls for efficiency and 
service in society. We sometimes run away from 
the real test of real things and cry out for culture, 
as if culture had any meaning apart from its use 
in adjustment. 

It is especially important in teaching to lead 
pupils to recognize the various environmental re- 
lations and uses of the elements of subject-matter 
or of method which are brought into the school. 
If pupils are not thus guided they may fail to see 
these relations and uses and consequently may 
fail to apply the knowledge and abilities devel- 
oped in school to those phases of the outside en- 
vironment to which they should be applied. Of 
course, no relation is to be brought into the school 
which is not in the environment; to trump up arti- 
ficial relations between elements for school pur- 
poses — to stimulate interest, etc., — is misleading 
and almost dishonest. But as a given element of 
subject-matter or of method may be environment- 
ally related in a number of different ways to a 
number of different elements, the limited time and 
energy of the pupil necessitate a comparative test 
and a rigid selection of these relations, so as to 



1 68 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

bring into the school only those that have the 
greatest quantity and quality of environmental 
usefulness. The test will therefore be similar to 
that of the elements themselves; in fact, it is but 
part of the latter, because the values of the ele- 
ments cannot be comparatively determined with- 
out a comparative test of the values of their rela- 
tions. This is why many teachers do not know the 
subject-matter or method they teach; in knowing 
the elements apart from the environment which 
gives them value they really do not know what 
their value is. This is probably the weakest point 
in our teaching force, — the ignorance of teachers 
regarding the environmental relations and values 
of school studies. Their training should be more 
in practical sociology and less in hypothetical 
pedagogy, and a far greater emphasis upon the 
social relations of the curriculum is needed both 
in normal school and in university courses for 
teachers. 

However suggestive may be the various 
schemes of concentration or correlation, they can 
never be widely accepted, because the centres of 
their circles are not the centres of the environ- 
ment. The elements are not thus centripetalized 
in actuality, Therefore, in school they should be 
interpreted only in those inter-relations that rep- 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 169 

resent, explain, and emphasize their comparative 
environmental nature and significance, the same 
elements, if necessary, being brought into the 
course again and again to reveal new relations 
and to help in apperceiving new elements. 

It is not denied that elements and relations not 
directly useful in themselves must be included as 
a preparation for elements directly useful, but this 
indirect usefulness may be of more comparative 
value than the direct usefulness of some compet- 
ing elements. It is also not denied that logical 
consistency and completeness sometimes require 
the introduction of elements and relations not 
directly useful in themselves, in order to bind to- 
gether those elements of a subject that have been 
selected as of the most comparative value. The 
elements thus introduced would then have to stand 
the test of their usefulness in binding together 
directly useful elements. Furthermore, the logical 
consistency and completeness of a text or course 
must in themselves be tested. They should not 
exceed the logical consistency and completeness 
necessary for the proper use of the elements of 
that text or course in their environmental rela- 
tions, or for the proper illustration of specific 
methods which are to be worked up into valuable 
general concepts of method. 



i 7 o MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

Thoroughness is another untested school ideal. 
Thoroughness has no meaning in the abstract; 
it must be judged by some standard, for some 
purpose. Elements of school work must be 
taught as thoroughly as is necessary for their 
proper use in the environment and for the proper 
illustration of specific methods. In other words, 
thoroughness must be valued according to its 
functional significance. 

Let it not be supposed that the standard as out- 
lined interferes in any way with the adjustment of 
the curriculum to successive stages of the pupil's 
development. There is no essential opposition be- 
tween the selected elements and relations of the 
environment, which are brought into the school, 
and the developing capacities and interests of the 
pupil. The present opposition is one of the arti- 
ficialities of school work. Dewey argues power- 
fully that "the child and the curriculum" can be 
vitally related, that the experience of society rep- 
resented by the curriculum can be arranged, in- 
terpreted, "psychologized" for the child in such 
a way as to be assimilated by him and become 
his own experience. The outside environment 
must be made into the meaningful school environ- 
ment of the pupil, and there is no need why, in this 
process, the elements of the outside environment 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 171 

should be misrelated or misvalued. On the other 
hand, it is only in so far as these two environments 
are similar that the child lives in school a life that 
has a functional value outside. And this is the 
way to develop a true, educative interest, rather 
than an artificial interest, in school work, by 
arousing in the child a desire to express himself in 
response to those phases of his school environment 
which he recognizes as also important in his out- 
side environment. With this limited outside en- 
vironment as a starting-point and a constant source 
of reference, the school should continue to enlarge 
the child's experience through the knowledge and 
activities of a larger environment, the epitome of 
that outside environment for which he is being 
prepared. Thus will his school environment and 
his outside environment together grow into that 
of the intelligent adult citizen, and thus will his 
specific abilities to meet the opportunities and re- 
sponsibilities of his adult life be developed by 
meeting the opportunities and responsibilities of 
his constantly enlarging school life. 

It may be objected that both the present and 
the future outside environment of each individual 
pupil are so different from those of any other pupil 
that it is impossible to select, by any comparative 
test of an environmental usefulness, elements with 



172 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

which to organize a uniform course of study for 
the masses of children in the public schools. Such 
an objection really denies the possibility of mak- 
ing any suitable uniform course of study at all. 
If we cannot make one by selection according to 
environmental values, we certainly cannot make a 
better one by selection according to any other kind 
of values. The public school system is based upon 
the belief that at least the great majority of pupils 
have now and will have in the future a community 
of need, interest, and responsibility. This com- 
munity is represented by the minimum require- 
ments in the course of study, representing the es- 
sential elements in the common present or future 
environment of most pupils. Opposition to this 
common ground of school work is due to a failure 
to realize that the like-mindedness of the citizens, 
as Giddings suggests, is a fundamental necessity 
in a democratic society, and that our public 
schools, through their common courses and inter- 
ests, ought to lead in developing this like-minded- 
ness. Above a minimum course there should be 
room for individual variations in advanced and 
parallel work and, even within this minimum, al- 
lowances should be made for individuality of 
response to the subject-matter and methods given. 
But if there is to be no common course for our 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 173 

public schools, in city, county, or State, our educa- 
tion will carry individualism to an extreme and 
will lose its great mission of being one of the 
principal cohesive forces in society. 

This standard of educational values also applies 
to school management. The motives, routine, 
discipline, etc., of school life can be analyzed into 
elements of subject-matter and of method and can 
be tested for their environmental values. It is 
wasting a great opportunity to compel pupils into 
an artificial regime, when the very organization 
and processes of the school community ought to 
prefigure and prepare for the community outside. 
If this ideal is introduced into school manage- 
ment, it will become a great force for social effi- 
ciency and for ethical training by developing 
through social relations those specialized habits 
and general concepts that will make for good in 
the individual and in the environment. What is 
needed is not necessarily a "school city" or a 
formal copy of some social organization, for these 
may or may not interpret the spirit of society and 
therefore may or may not be educative. The 
community life of the school must emphasize the 
standards, responsibilities, and methods of the 
community life outside, in so far as the school can 
use these for educational purposes. The doctrine 



174 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

of formal discipline cannot apply here any more 
than elsewhere. Specific subject-matter and 
method, specific training and abilities, general con- 
cepts of method — these are the materials, methods, 
and results of the ethical training that should come 
through school motives and discipline. If these 
materials and methods are those common to both 
the school and the outside environment, the results 
will be of untold value; but if the materials and 
methods of the school are artificial, the results 
will be of limited value. Through society are we 
educated for society. 

Before the standard developed in this essay is 
applied, for the purpose of illustration, to some 
phases of elementary and secondary school cur- 
ricula, it will be profitable to compare a few 
standards of educational values, set by writers op- 
posed to the doctrine of formal discipline. Four 
are by educationists and two by sociologists. 

"The ability to deal with any situation depends 
upon one's having had experience with some simi- 
lar situation. And the educationist will so plan it 
in view of this principle that the individual will 
in his educational course be made ready for those 
general and special duties which he will perform 

as a member of a community He will 

exclude everything which does not give very good 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 175 

proofs of its suitability to assist the learner in his 
relations with men and things, by presenting to 
him now situations which he will encounter, 
though it may be in a more complex form, in later 
life. In the matter of studies purporting to be of 
social value, for example, the educationist will 
proceed upon the doctrine that if the individual 
can be got to react in desirable ways to social sit- 
uations actual or ideal during the developmental 
period, then he will acquire modes of reaction 
which will be serviceable to him in all times and 
places. The educationist will cast out everything 
which cannot return an affirmative answer to the 
question, Will the individual in mastering you be 
making in the best way adaptations which he will 
be required to make as a member of a social or- 
ganism?" (O'Shea.) 1 

"The educational values of different subjects, 
i.e., their efficiency in promoting the realization 
of the aim of education as defined above [to pre- 
pare for complete living], consist (a) in the scope, 
kind, strength, and permanence of the incentives 
to activity; and (b) in the kind, degree, and 
permanence of the power to think and execute that 

those subjects may develop The kinds 

of incentives to activity, whether intellectual, sesthe- 

1 O'Shea, Education as Adjustment, 1903, pp. 288-291. 



176 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

tic, moral, or constructive, derivable from the 
course of study, depend on content (the nature of 
the subject-matter). Since incentives are impulses 
to activity growing out of interest in the subject- 
matter, they will develop strength and permanence 
when interest in the subject-matter is strong, real, 

and permanent Power means ability to 

do something — to bring about results. The re- 
sults achieved will always be in some one field of 
activity, however; and the kind of power de- 
veloped through the pursuit of a given subject will 
consequently be usually restricted to power in 

dealing with data of a particular sort ,. 

There is no such thing as power in general that 
can be cultivated through the pursuit of any one 
subject, and can then be drawn upon at any time 
for successful achievement in other subjects. 

The power developed will always be 

chiefly specific: but if, through correlation, the 
mutual ramification and interdependence of sub- 
jects are traced; and further, if the method of one 
subject is explicitly carried over to other subjects 
to which it can be legitimately applied, the power 
developed will also be to some extent general." 
(Hanus,) 1 

"With the abandonment of the dogma of 

1 Hanus, Educational Aims and Educational Values, 1899, pp. 7-10. 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 177 

faculty discipline, which assured us that all the 
powers of the mind could be acquired by formal 
exercises in dead languages, school mathematics, 
etc., there clearly remains but one alternative — to 
train the pupils for the specific goal it is desirable 
to reach. This alternative permits no compro- 
mise. The exercises which prepare for life are 
the duties, knowledge, and emotional attitudes of 
existing life itself, which the world's workers are 
currently using. The alternative recognizes that 
like produces only like, and, therefore, repudiates 
those exercises such as Latin or algebra, which in 
themselves are acknowledged to be unused, except 
as mental trapezes of the schoolroom. It requires 
that the pupil's energy shall be centred upon the 
mastery of those things which existing world life 
requires of its active and productive journeymen; 
anything less is insufficient, and anything of a 
different character is irrelevant. How shall we 
obtain such a course of study, and who shall sys- 
tematize it? Manifestly, the first step in the task 
is to catalogue the essential duties, items of knowl- 
edge, and emotional attitudes current in the 
world's usage. This material must then be set up 
and arranged in the schools as goals of instruc- 
tion, and the business of the pedagogue will be to 
enable the pupil to acquire these world-used ma- 



178 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

terials to an effective degree as readily as pos- 
sible." (Burk.) * 

"The implication intended is that subjects 
should be studied because they are intrinsically 
valuable; because the possession of a knowledge 
of them is distinctly worth while. One of the 
highest arts of the pedagogue is to make the 
pupil see and appreciate these values and conse- 
quently to be so attracted by the acquisition that 
he is unsatisfied without them." 

"A critical consideration of formal discipline 
leads to some very important conclusions concern- 
ing the purposes and arrangement of a course of 
study, (i) Education is a process of adjustment 
of the individual and the race to varying situations 
to secure their highest welfare. (2) Particular 
adjustments demand particular experiences which 
cannot be furnished by any sort of general gym- 
nastics. (3) Therefore, each type of adjustment 
must be secured through special appropriate forms 
of experience. (4) As life is so complex, a great 
range of experiences is demanded to fortify the 
individual for his multiform situations. (5) The 
curriculum should represent prevised or preparatory 

1 Burk, The World's Work, July, 1909, "The Bankruptcy of 'Edu- 
cation,' " II., pp. 1 1764, 1 1765. See Burk's interesting but exaggerated 
attack on the doctrine of formal discipline in the June number of the 
same magazine. 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 179 

experiences as well as permanent life experiences 
and hence must be varied. If limited in scope it 
denies experiences necessary for the varied devel- 
opment of each individual, and also fails to pro- 
vide equally for all. (6) It is necessary to bear 
in mind that the education of the human race 
which produced the high degree of development 
which it now possesses was nearly all secured be- 
fore schools and formal studies were invented or 
arranged. (7) Racial education was nearly all 
gained through intensely practical and utilitarian 

means ( 8 ) In our scheme of education we 

must not forget the basal primitive means of 
culture. Schools and the formal school arts are 

not absolutely necessary (9) My meaning 

is now, I trust, clearly apparent. All school arts 
should be developed out of life's pursuits and in 
turn contribute to the better accomplishment of 
these activities." (Bolton.) 1 

"The prime problem of education, as the 
sociologist views it, is how to promote adaptation 
of the individual to the social conditions, natural 
and artificial, within which individuals live, and 

move, and have their being Sociology has 

no tolerance for the pedantry that persists in 

1 Bolton, Principles of Education, 1910, Chap. XXVIII, "General Dis- 
cipline and Educational Values," pp. 768, 769, 770. 



180 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

carpentering together educational courses out of 
subjects which are supposed to exercise, first, the 
perceptive faculty, then the memory, then the lan- 
guage faculty, then the logical faculty, etc. On 
the contrary, every represented contact of a per- 
son with a portion of reality sooner or later calls 
into exercise every mental power of that person, 
probably in a more rational order and proportion 
than can be produced by an artificial process. Our 
business as teachers is primarily, therefore, not 
to train particular mental powers, but to select 
points of contact between learning minds and the 
reality that is to be learned. The mind's own 
autonomy will look out for the appropriate series 
of subjective mental process. In the second place, 
our business as teachers is to bring these percep- 
tive contacts of pupils' minds with points of ob- 
jective reality into true association with all the 
remainder of objective reality, i.e., we should 
help pupils first to see things, and, second, to see 
things together as they actually exist in reality. 
In other words, the demand of sociology upon 
pedagogy is that it shall stop wet-nursing orphan 
mental faculties and find out how to bring per- 
sons into touch with what objectively is, as it is. 
The mind itself will do the rest." (Small.) 1 

1 Small, American Journal of Sociology, May, 1897, "Some Demands 
of Sociology Upon Pedagogy," pp. 842, 843. 



EDUCATIONAL VALUES 181 

"The only thing that can 'develop' or 
'strengthen' the faculties or the mind is knowl- 
edge, and all real knowledge is science. The ef- 
fect of this on the mind is to furnish it with some- 
thing. It constitutes its contents, and, as we have 
seen, the power, value, and real character of mind 
depend upon its contents. Without knowledge 
the mind, however capable, is impotent and worth- 
less. But there is a great mass of knowledge in 
the world. It does no good unless it is possessed 
by the mind. It is a power as soon as it is pos- 
sessed by the mind. It is as useful to one mind as 
to another. It is the only working power in 
society, and the working power of society increases 
in proportion to the number possessing it, — prob- 
ably in a greater proportion. Only a few minds 
possess any considerable part of it. All are 
capable of possessing it all. The paramount duty 
of society, therefore, is to put that knowledge into 
the minds of all its members." (Ward.) 1 

1 Ward, Applied Sociology, 1906, p. 312. There is a failure here to 
distinguish clearly between knowledge and ability. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE ELEMENTARY CURRICULUM 

What are the elements of subject-matter and 
of method which are repeated over and over 
again in such important ways in the environment 
as to necessitate their being included in the school 
preparation of the great majority of people in 
that environment? Germany and France have 
answered this question with far more national 
unanimity and success than we can hope to attain 
in this country, because our local control and di- 
versity of conditions render such uniformity unde- 
sirable and impossible. Is it not possible, how- 
ever, for our States, individually if not collectively, 
to select a minimum of elements in language, 
arithmetic, geography, etc., which will be common 
and valuable to the present or future environ- 
ments of the great majority of their elementary 
school pupils? These elements will be selected on 
account of the superior number and importance 
(quantity and quality) of their uses in the environ- 

182 



ELEMENTARY CURRICULUM 183 

ment, in comparison with other elements competing 
for their places in the curriculum. 

A glance at many text-books used in our schools 
reveals a collection of elements of all degrees of 
value, from zero up to the highest. Especially is 
this true in arithmetic, geography, and history. 
And, far more significant, these elements are often 
not graded or emphasized so as to show their 
value as compared with each other; on the dead 
level fact versus fact both teacher and pupil be- 
come bewildered in interpreting the usefulness of 
the elements presented. The amount of space and 
time devoted to this or that element is often dis- 
proportionate, above or below, their real value as 
judged by a true environmental standard. The 
emphasis put upon a given element in school 
should reflect the emphasis put upon it in the en- 
vironment. The difficulty in mastering an ele- 
ment of subject-matter or of method might cause 
it to take up more time and attention in school 
than its comparative value would justify; but this 
would be unusual, if the element were properly 
placed in the curriculum and the proper prepara- 
tion were made for it. However, if the time and 
attention required to master the element would 
still be far in excess of its real value, then there 



1 84 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

would be doubt as to its right to a place in the cur- 
riculum at all. 

McMurry has well criticized the lack of proper 
emphasis in courses of study and has outlined a 
topical scheme based upon the comparative use- 
fulness of the elements. He also shows how such 
a scheme would eliminate many elements of com- 
parative uselessness, now emphasized on account 
of their supposed disciplinary value. "The idea 
that the discipline gained will make up for all 
losses is one of those long-lived myths which is 
at last rapidly disappearing before a more rational 
view of education. A large proportion of the 
time of children is now wasted by excellent teachers 
in gaining a formal excellence in studies which is 
beyond the present needs of the children, and has 
no defence except on the basis of the exploded doc- 
trine of formal discipline." x 

The present necessity is for an elimination of 
the less important elements and a graded scale of 
emphasis upon the more important. The over- 
crowded curriculum would then be reduced in 
amount, confusion, and strain. Room would be 
made for those new elements that by their com- 
parative value deserve places in the curriculum; 

1 McMurry, Course of Study in the Eighth Grades, 1906, Vol. I., pp. 
47, 48. 



ELEMENTARY CURRICULUM 185 

nature-study and manual training would be repre- 
sented proportionately to their environmental 
usefulness; domestic, industrial, and commercial 
elements would be free to assert their value and 
rights in elementary education. Progressive 
changes in the environment would cause progres- 
sive changes in the curriculum, by the elimination 
of old elements, the introduction of new elements, 
or a redistribution of emphasis upon the elements. 
And, over and above the minimum requirements 
for any State system, or even for any local system, 
there would still be room for elements of special 
usefulness to individual pupils or groups of pupils 
according to their abilities, tastes, or future occu- 
pations. 

There is no overwhelming difficulty in working 
out an agreement as to the elements of arithmetic, 
geography, history, etc., which will identify the 
school environment with the outside environment. 
What are the most important present uses of deci- 
mal fractions ? These certainly can be determined. 
Then put these and only these uses in the curricu- 
lum. What are the elements of knowledge 
about the German Empire most often required 
of our citizens generally by our present relations 
to that country? These certainly can be deter- 
mined. Then put these elements and only these 



1 86 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

in the curriculum. What are the facts about the 
Louisiana Purchase necessary for the mass of our 
citizens to know? These certainly can be deter- 
mined. Then put these facts and only these in 
the curriculum. And so on through the elementary 
school studies. 

We claim that these elements can be selected 
after careful appraisal by experts and that only 
in such a way can a curriculum be formed that 
will have the most functional power for the largest 
number of pupils. To claim that it is im- 
possible for any group of people to realize an 
environmental standard of comparative values in 
making out a curriculum is to deny the possibility 
of intelligent guidance in education. We do not 
claim that the elements of most comparative value 
can be selected by this or that text-book author 
or publisher, however good he may be, for such 
a selection requires a broader, deeper knowledge 
of environmental values than one man can pos- 
sess. Through expert committees, appointed by 
States or by professional associations, the best 
and most comprehensive knowledge available 
should be brought to bear upon the selection of 
elements for courses of study in the public schools. 
Rather than have these courses blindly conform 
to this or that text-book, which may or may not 



ELEMENTARY CURRICULUM 187 

have any creditable or consistent selection and 
valuation of elements, the courses should repre- 
sent and realize the best standard that the special- 
ists can make. Then, to this standard text- 
books should be made to conform. The choice 
of the mental food and exercise of hundreds of 
thousands of children is far too important a prob- 
lem to be left to a text-book author, to a pub- 
lisher, to an official, or to a lay board of trustees. 
The lackadaisical way in which the selection of 
the curriculum is left to anybody or everybody is 
cause for a serious indictment of the educational 
profession. No wonder we are skeptical about 
ever knowing the value of this or that element, 
when we take so little care about the selection of it 
and rely upon a crude empiricism to test it. 

The contest between content and form in the 
elementary school is often confused with the con- 
test between the adherents and the opponents to 
the doctrine of formal discipline. But an em- 
phasis upon the form studies is not inconsistent 
with the doctrine of specific disciplines. The 
problem now is to control this emphasis according 
to the need of these specific forms in the outside 
environment, to give only such attention to them as 
will be required for their mastery and for their use 
in that environment. That a form is often over- 



1 88 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

emphasized, we agree, especially as it is sometimes 
taught apart from the content and relations with 
which it is environmentally used. But, as Dewey 
says, form is of as much value as content and 
should receive its due emphasis "in subordination 
to an end." 

The building of general concepts of method 
from particular methods is not the work of the 
elementary school to a great degree. The pupil 
is not ready for such conceptualizing. The con- 
scious abstracting of the common elements from 
particular methods and the generalizing of these 
into a general concept of method require a men- 
tal development that rarely comes before adoles- 
cence. Therefore, the mastery of particular 
methods, of special forms, is the methodological 
aim of the elementary school; and this means, of 
course, particular methods of the most compara- 
tive value in relation to particular subject-matter 
of the most comparative value. In many sub- 
jects and especially in the realm of "morals 
and manners" there are opportunities for the 
teacher to suggest other particular applications of 
a method than those actually applied in particular 
situations in school or home or playground. 
These suggested applications extend the conscious- 
ness of the method's applicability, and tend to 



ELEMENTARY CURRICULUM 189 

make widely transferable the specific ability de- 
veloped through use of the method, even though 
general concepts are not formed. In the last two 
years of the elementary school, when many pupils 
have reached the adolescent period, some specific 
methods can be worked up into general concepts; 
but care must be taken not to force this process 
prematurely. 1 The high-school furnishes the great 
opportunity in public education for forming gen- 
eral concepts of method, and it is to this aspect 
of the secondary curriculum that we will devote 
most attention. 

1 Bagley, Journal of Educational Psychology, January, 1910: "The 
assumption that the elementary school is not important in huilding 
general concepts of method has not as yet a satisfactory basis in 
experimental tests. In the reviewer's opinion, there is a strong prob- 
ability that the specific training of childhood may be made to issue in 
general attitudes or prejudices that fulfill the same function as the 
logically-developed concepts of method." This point is well made. 
Though we believe that the systematic formation of concepts of 
method cannot be a part of school work before adolescence, the sug- 
gested substitutes for the pre-adolescent period are of great value. 



CHAPTER IX 
THE SECONDARY CURRICULUM 

The most generally valuable elements of the 
environment having been introduced into the ele- 
mentary curriculum, there is not as much need for 
a large body of prescribed elements in the second- 
ary curriculum. The basic representativeness of 
the elementary course, even more than the age and 
nature of the adolescent pupils, allows election in 
the high-school. It must never be forgotten, how- 
ever, that a general, all-round development of high- 
school pupils necessitates their mastering such simi- 
lar elements of subject-matter and of method as 
will prepare them to meet the general and funda- 
mental needs of the environment they will have in 
common with each other. Specialization in the 
high-school should be based upon a minimum of 
definitely and uniformly prescribed studies, such 
as English, geometry, United States history, and 
either biology or physics. 

Over and above this limited prescription, 
190 



SECONDARY CURRICULUM 191 

studies with similar elements of subject-matter or 
of method can be grouped together and elected 
by pupils according to their individual capacities 
and careers. The group system can be defended 
on the principle that similar elements in group 
studies, rather than exactly the same elements in 
prescribed studies, are sufficient to promote a simi- 
lar general development in all pupils, while allow- 
ing some freedom of choice. The system can fur- 
ther be defended on the principle that, even 
though the subject-matter in a group may be 
different, the similarity of the methods used with 
this different subject-matter is sufficient and far 
more important in promoting a similar general 
development in all pupils. This is especially true 
if the common elements in the specific methods 
used by the pupils are consciously -abstracted and 
generalized by them into general concepts of 
method, applicable to the entire group. If studies 
have little similarity, either in subject-matter or in 
method, they should not be grouped together and 
pupils should not be allowed to substitute one for 
the other, except as a free elective. 

And finally, over and above definite prescrip- 
tions and group electives, there ought to be some 
room in the secondary curriculum for free electives, 
to allow individuality free play without any con- 



192 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

sideration of uniformity or similarity as compared 
with the other pupils. 

As to what proportion of the entire course 
should be given to each of the three divisions — 
definite prescriptions, group electives, and free 
electives — few will agree. But, as Dutton and 
Snedden show, the practical agreement on this 
problem is really greater than might appear at 
first thought. "At present it may be said that 
throughout the secondary schools of the United 
States there are prescribed: a foreign language, 
algebra and geometry, English, a science, and one 
year in history. This makes about two-thirds of 
the course, leaving certain possible alternations, to 
be made according as the student aims to enter 
this or that college, or to go into active life.*' 
Of the six prescribed studies, three (algebra, 
geometry, and English) are definite prescriptions, 
and three (foreign language, science, and his- 
tory) are group electives. Of course, in many 
high-schools the foreign language or science or 
history is definitely prescribed, but we may con- 
sider it the present tendency to put these studies 
into groups. The authors also emphasize the in- 
fluence upon this course of the doctrine of formal 
discipline. "Latin and mathematics occupy promi- 
nent places in all secondary school curricula be- 



SECONDARY CURRICULUM 193 

cause of a general belief in their value as agents 
of mental training. This is illustrated by the fact 
that in almost all high schools mathematics is a 
prescribed study for girls as well as boys, al- 
though the former will very rarely follow the sub- 
ject up and apply it to cultural or vocational 
stages. This theory has also affected the charac- 
ter of the teaching of other subjects not originally 
introduced for disciplinary purposes. Modern 
languages, science, and even history have been 
modified along lines supposed to be suited to 
mental training." * 

Although the criticisms made against the hap- 
hazard selection of elements in the elementary cur- 
riculum apply with equal force to the secondary 
curriculum, we will not repeat our former discus- 
sion, but will confine our attention to the pre- 
scribed and the group elective system and to the 
general method aim of the high-school. 

Does the present secondary course, as sum- 
marized by Dutton and Snedden, include for the 
majority of pupils the elements of the most com- 

1 Dutton and Snedden, Administration of Public Education in the 
United States, 1908, pp. 366, 362. A similar discussion is to be 
found in Brown (J. F.), American High School, 1909, Chap. VII. 
Brown expresses a belief in the specific character of mental discipline 
but fails to make a consistent application of his belief in his program 
of studies. See also the outline of definite prescriptions and group 
electives in De Garmo, Principles of Secondary Education, Vol. I., 
"The Studies," p. 177. 



[04 



jvikni al disupunk 



paraiive value of the environment? As to the 
speeiiic value of subject-matter or of method, it 
does not. Algebra and geometry are of compar- 
atively lil lie speeiiic value to most high-school boys 
and girls, except as a preparation lor advanced 
work in similar subjects, which only a lew will 
take. I lie need ol algebra and geometry in 
physics has probably been over-elaborated, and 
the need ol (hem m some vocations is a special 
(elective) not a general need. The subject-mat- 
ter ol Mnglish is, ol course, ol supreme value- in 
giving an acquaintance with the best uses of our 
language and (he best ideals of our literature, 
though there is a doubt as to the environmental 
value ol some ol the linguistic and literary anat- 
omy now required. The three group electives 
(foreign language, science, and history) vary in 
speeiiic value according to the subject taken in 
each ol the three groups. Some studies in a group 
may rank above others in that group in the com- 
munity ol their elements with more frequent and 
more important elements in the environment ol 
most pupils. Therefore, a pupil may elect from 
a group a study ol less value, and this loss in his 
general development may not be compensated for 

by advantages to his individual capacity or career, 

because in the same group a more valuable 



SECONDARY CURRICULUM 195 

study for general development might also have 
had just as much value for him individually. As 
h;is heen suggested, the group system is justified 
hy its ellorts to eomhine general representative- 
ness with individual freedom, hut many ellorts ol 
this kind fail hy sacrificing the former to the lat- 
ter without compensation. It might he wise to 
increase the number ol definite prescriptions and 
still leave a surplus for group election. I lowever, 
for both the definite prescriptions and for the 
group elect ives in the secondary curriculum, (here 
is great need for a more careful study of the speci- 
fic values of subjects than has yet been at- 
tempted. 

In the secondary school, far more than in the 
elementary school, studies have a general method 
value in addition to the value of their specific sub- 
ject-matter and method. The rationalizing ten- 
dency of adolescent pupils can be guided to form, 
from the specific methods used, general concepts 
of method of great environmental value-. Hut we 
repeat that concentrated ellorr on the part of both 
teacher and pupil is required to do this. The 
most wasteful weakness in high-school teaching is 
the failure- to work out and apply general con- 
cepts of method from mathematics, concepts of 
an exact and universally valid method; from nalu- 



196 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

ral sciences, concepts of the inductive and deduc- 
tive phases of scientific method; from languages, 
concepts of how to interpret and master forms of 
expression; from history, concepts of how to un- 
derstand and deal with social conditions. 

What are the kinds of general method to be 
prescribed, definitely or by groups, in the curricu- 
lum of all high-school pupils? First, the method 
of pure mathematics; second, the method of the 
mathematico-physical sciences; third, the method 
of the biological sciences; fourth, the method of 
the psychological sciences ; fifth, the method of the 
sociological sciences. The first method is exact 
and universally valid — the ideal of all the 
sciences; the second approaches the first in so far 
as our knowledge of the data and their causes 
allows us to use exact quantitative forms; the 
third includes life variations, and, therefore, con- 
not use exact quantitative forms; the fourth in- 
cludes the psychic in addition to the life varia- 
tions; and the fifth includes the social in addi- 
tion to the life and the psychic variations. 
There is a decrease in exactness and validity as 
we go from the first to the fifth. Every high- 
school pupil should know and use each of these 
five divisions of method, for one method cannot 
take the place of another and even within these 



SECONDARY CURRICULUM 197 

large divisions there are subdivisions with im- 
portant differences in method. In the secondary 
curriculum, geometry is a good example of the first 
method, physics of the second, botany of the third, 
psychology of the fourth, and history of the fifth. 
Physical geography uses mainly the second and 
the third methods ; language, literature, ethics, and 
art the fourth and fifth. At present, the second- 
ary curriculum is weakest in the fifth method, — 
the most important of the five. It should be 
specially represented by history, civics, economics, 
and commercial geography. In addition to these 
five divisions of method, emphasis should be given 
to the methods of manual, domestic, and industrial 
training. If all high-school pupils are required to 
work out and apply each one of the methods here 
mentioned, they ought to be well educated, espe- 
cially if the methods have been derived from studies 
of great specific value. 

Our brief mention of elementary and second- 
ary curricula serves only to illustrate the standard 
of values previously outlined. We have confined 
our discussion and our references almost entirely 
to the one problem of mental discipline, with a 
few of its applications. Though we have pur- 
posely omitted any discussion of college education, 
on account of our skepticism regarding it, we be- 



198 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

lieve that the principles emphasized in this essay 
will apply to it also. 

Mental discipline is the most important thing 
in education, but it is specific, not general. The 
ability developed by means of one subject can be 
transferred to another subject only in so far as the 
latter has elements in common with the former. 
Abilities should be developed in school only by 
means of those elements of subject-matter and of 
method that are common to the most valuable 
phases of the outside environment. In the high- 
school there should also be an effort to work out 
general concepts of method from the specific 
methods used. Through courses which develop 
valuable specific abilities and, in addition, valuable 
concepts of method, the school can become a vital, 
direct means of preparing boys and girls for en- 
vironmental usefulness, especially if the school com- 
bines, simultaneously or successively, with the gen- 
eral course such vocational training as will make 
its graduates independent economic factors in 
society. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY AND INDEX 

{Page numbers refer to place of reference in this book.) 

Adams, Herbartian Psychology Applied to Edu- 
cation, 1897, pp. 17, 18. 

Angell (J. R.), Educational Review, June, 1908, 
"The Doctrine of Formal Discipline in the 
Light of the Principles of General Psychology," 

PP-3I-3- 
Arnold, School and Class Management, vol. II, 
1910, p. 52. 

Bagley, Educative Process, 1905, chap. XIII, 
"Formal versus Intrinsic Values of Experience: 
The Doctrine of Formal Discipline," pp. 79, 
80, 138, 139. 

Bagley, Journal of Educational Psychology, Jan- 
uary, 1910, pp. 136, 147, 148, 189. 

Bagley, Psychological Bulletin, March, 19 10, 
"The Psychology of School Practice," p. 64. 

Bain, Education as a Science, 1878, p. 22. 

Bair, Psychological Review Monographs, 1902, 

199 



200 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

vol. V, No. 19, "The Practice Curve," pp. 71, 

72, 130. 
Bennett, Formal Discipline, 1907, pp. 93-94. 
Bergstrom, American Journal of Psychology, 

June, 1894, "The Relation of the Interference 

to the Practice Effect of an Association," p. 130. 
Bolton, Principles of Education, 19 10, chap. 

XXVIII, "General Discipline and Educational 

Values," pp. 46, 47, 134, 135, 138, 178, 179. 
Bolton, School Review, February, 1904, "Facts 

and Fictions Concerning Educational Values," 

P- 47- 
Book, Psychology of Skill, 1908, p. 66. 
Brown (E. E.), Congress of Arts and Sciences, 

St. Louis, 1904, vol. VIII, "Present Problems 

in the Theory of Education," p. 28. 
Brown (E. E.), Public School Journal, December, 

1893, "How is Formal Culture Possible?" pp. 

24-8. 
Brown (J. F.), American High School, 1909, p. 

193- 
Burk, World's Work, June and July, 1909, "The 

Bankruptcy of 'Education,' " pp. 176-8. 

Charters, Methods of Teaching, 1909, pp. 61, 62. 
Cole, American Hope, 19 10, chap. V, "The 
Training of Powers," pp. 35, 36. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY AND INDEX 201 

Colgrove, The Teacher and the School, 19 10, 

P- 52. 

Collar and Crook, School Management and Meth- 
ods of Instruction, 1900, p. 29. 

Collins, School Review, October, 1906, p. 97. 

Colvin, Some Facts in Partial Justification of the 
So-Called Dogma of Formal Discipline, 1909 
and 19 10, University of Illinois, pp. 57-60, 
*35> J 36, 138, 163. 

Coover and Angell (F.), American Journal of 
Psychology, July, 1907, "General Practice Ef- 
fect of Special Exercise," pp. 79, 95, 96. 

Cousinet, L'Educateur Moderne, April, 19 10, pp. 
136, 166. 

Davis, Yale Psychological Studies, 1898, "Re- 
searches Upon Cross-Education/' pp. 6$, 68-71. 

Dearborn, Journal of Educational Psychology, 
September, 19 10, "Experiments in Learning," 

PP- 52, 53- 

Dearborn, Psychological Bulletin, February, 1908, 
"The General Effects of Special Practice in 
Memory," p. 85. 

Dearborn, School Review, December, 19 10, p. 
136, 

De Garmo, Dictionary of Philosophy and Psy- 
chology, 1 901-2, "Formal Culture," p. 7. 



202 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

De Garmo, Principles of Secondary Education, 
vol. I, 1907, "The Studies," p. 193. 

Delabarre, Education, May, 1909, "Formal Dis- 
cipline and the Doctrine of Common Elements," 
pp. 149-152. 

Dewey, How We Think, 19 10, pp. 47-50. 

Dewey, Science, January 28, 19 10, "Science as 
Subject-Matter and as Method," p. 50. 

Dexter and Garlick, Psychology in the School- 
room, 1905 ed., p. 29. 

Dutton and Snedden, Administration of Public 
Education in the United States, 1908, pp. 192, 
193. 

Ebert and Meumann, Archiv fur die Gesamte 
Psychologic, IV Band, 1. u. 2. Heft, 1904, pp. 
65, 85. 

Ellison, Pedagogical Seminary, March, 1909, 
"The Acquisition of Skill," p. 64. 

Foster, Journal of Educational Psychology, Jan- 
uary, 191 1, "The Effect of Practice upon Visual- 
izing and upon the Reproduction of Visual Im- 
pressions," p. 117. 

Fracker, Psychological Review Monographs, 
1908, vol. IX, No. 38, University of Iowa 
Studies in Psychology, No. 5, "On the Trans- 
ference of Training in Memory," pp. 89-93. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY AND INDEX 203 

Graves, History of Education, vol. I, 1909, vol. 
II, 1910, pp. 14, 15. 

Hanus, Educational Aims and Educational Values, 
1899, pp. 176, 177. 

Hayward, Education and the Heredity Spectre, 
1908, p. 18. 

Henderson, Education, May, 1909, "Formal Dis- 
cipline from the Standpoint of Analytical and 
Experimental Psychology," pp. 44-6. 

Henderson, Text-Book in the Principles of Educa- 
tion, chap. X, "The Question of Formal Dis- 
cipline," pp. 15, 16, 130, 135, 138, 157-9- 

Hinsdale, Studies in Education, 1896 ("Dogma 
of Formal Discipline," 1894, and "Laws of 
Mental Congruence," 1895), pp. 28, 29. 

Hoose, Report of National Educational Associa- 
tion, 1890, "Mental Effects of Form in Sub- 
ject-Matter," pp. 23, 24. 

Home, Education, May, 1909, "The Practical 
Influence of the New Views of Formal Dis- 
cipline," p. 166. 

Home, Psychological Principles of Education, 
1906, p. 166. 

Huey, Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading, 
1908, p. 10. 



2o 4 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

Hugh, Pedagogical Seminary, 1898, "Formal 
Discipline From the Standpoint of Physiological 
Psychology," pp. 18-20. 

James, Principles of Psychology, 1890, vol. I, pp. 
84, 85. 

Judd, Educational Review, June, 1908, "The Re- 
lation of Special Training to General Intelli- 
gence," pp. 81-4. 

Judd, School Review, February, 19 10, "On the 
Scientific Study of High School Problems," pp. 
39-42, 130. 

Lewis, School Review, April, 1905, "A Study in 
Formal Discipline," pp. 96, 97. 

Main, Educational Agriculture, 19 10, Western 

State Normal School, Hays, Kansas, p. 51. 
McMurry, Course of Study in the Eight Grades, 

1906, vol. I, p. 184. 
Meiklejohn, Educational Review, February, 1909, 

"Is Mental Training a Myth?" pp. 148, 149. 
Miller, Psychology of Thinking, 1909, pp. 50, 51. 
Monroe, Text-Book in the History of Education, 

1905. PP- i3» H- 



BIBLIOGRAPHY AND INDEX 205 

Miinsterberg, Psychology and the Teacher, 1909, 
PP- 33S- 

Norsworthy, New York Teachers' Monographs, 
December, 1902, "Formal Training," pp. 103, 
104. 

O'shea, Dynamic Factors in Education, 1906, pp. 

133. 134. 
O'shea, Education as Adjustment, 1903, pp. 174, 

175. 

Pillsbury, Educational Review, June, 1908, "The 
Effects of Training on Memory," pp. 56, 57. 

Raymont, Principles of Education, 1906 ed., pp. 

152, 153- 

Rein, Outlines of Pedagogics, 1892, p. 17. 

Rietz and Shade, Correlation of Efficiency in 
Mathematics and Efficiency in Other Subjects, 
University of Illinois, 1908, pp. 98, 99. 

Roark, Economy in Education, 1905, p. 29. 

Rowe, Habit-Formation and the Science of Teach- 
ing, 1909, pp. 60, 61, 138. 

Royce, Outlines of Psychology, 1903, pp. 54-6. 

Ruediger, Educational Review, November, 1908, 



206 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

"The Indirect Improvement of Mental Func- 
tions through Ideals," pp. 80, 81. 
Ruediger, Principles of Education, 1909, pp. 138, 

153-5. 

Riiger, Psychology of Efficiency, Archives of Psy- 
chology, No. 15, 1910, pp. 110-116, 136. 

Schurman, School Review, February, 1894, p. 
126. 

Scott, Psychological Review, March, 19 10, "Per- 
sonal Differences in Suggestibility," p. 116. 

Scripture, Smith and Brown, Yale Psychological 
Studies, 1894, "On the Education of Muscular 
Control and Power," pp. 66-8. 

Shorey, School Review, November, 19 10, "A 
Symposium on the Value of Humanistic, Par- 
ticularly Classical, Studies : The Classics and the 
New Education: III. The Case for the Clas- 
sics," pp. 37-9. 

Sihler, New York Evening Post, October 1, 19 10, 
"The Elective System," pp. 36, 37. 

Small, American Journal of Sociology, May, 1897, 
"Some Demands of Sociology upon Pedagogy," 
pp. 179, 180. 

Snedden, Problem of Vocational Education, 19 10, 
p. 51. 

Spencer, Education, 1861 ed., p. 165. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY AND INDEX 207 

Starch, Psychological Bulletin, January, 19 10, "A 
Demonstration of the Trial and Error Method 
in Learning,' , pp. 76, 77. 

Stone, Arithmetical Abilities, 1908, pp. 104, 105. 

Swift, Mind in the Making, 1908, chap. VI, "The 
Psychology of Learning," pp. 72-6. 

Taylor, School Review, 1894, pp. 126, 127. 

Thorndike, Educational Psychology, 1903 ed., 
chap. VIII, "The Influence of Special Forms 
of Training upon More General Abilities," pp. 
78, 79, 133. (This chapter is omitted from the 
19 10 ed., but a similar discussion is promised 
for a second volume) . 

Thorndike, Educational Psychology, 19 10 ed., 
chap. IX, "The Relations between the Amounts 
of Different Traits in the Same Individual," pp. 
44, 101. 

Thorndike, Principles of Teaching, 1906, chap. 
XV, "Formal Discipline," pp. 42-44, 137. 

Thorndike and Woodworth, Psychological Re- 
view, 1 90 1, "The Influence of Improvement in 
One Mental Function upon the Efficiency of 
Other Functions," pp. 79, 102. 

Tompkins, Philosophy of Teaching, 1891, p. 166. 

Wallin, Journal of Educational Psychology, 



208 MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

March, 19 10, u The Doctrine of Formal Dis- 
cipline: Two Neglected Instances of Transfer 
of Training," pp. 77, 78. 

Ward, Applied Sociology, 1906, p. 181. 

Wardlaw, Educational Review, January, 1898, 
"Is Mental Training a Myth?" p. 134. 

Wendell, Privileged Classes, 1908, "Our National 
Superstition," pp. 30, 31. 

Whipple, Journal of Educational Psychology, 
May, 19 10, "The Effect of Practice upon the 
Range of Visual Attention and of Visual Ap- 
prehension," pp. 116, 117. 

Whipple, Manual of Mental and Physical Tests, 
1910, pp. 52, 64, 101. 

White, Elements of Pedagogy, 1886, p. 29. 

Winch, British Journal of Psychology, January, 
1908, "The Transfer of Improvement in Mem- 
ory in School Children," pp. 86-9. 

Winch, Journal of Educational Psychology, De- 
cember, 19 10, "Accuracy in School Children. 
Does Improvement in Mathematical Accuracy 
'Transfer'?" pp. 102, 103, 105-110. 

Youmans, Culture Demanded by Modern Life, 
1867, "Mental Discipline in Education," p. 21. 

Ziller, Public School Journal, 1893, Quotations 
by Brown (E. E.), pp. 24, 25. 



m 3 mi 



